


Spiral

by daleyka



Series: The Island Alternative Timelines [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Han is not dead, Happy Ending, Kylo Ren Redemption, Luke is not dead, Multiple Bens, Slow Burn, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23447923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daleyka/pseuds/daleyka
Summary: Rey's met Ben before, but now she's alone with Kylo Ren and a long way from home. All she wants is a saber.Set at the beginning of The Force Awakens and follows on from my previous and still on-going fic, The Island. Could stand alone if you're on board with the idea of multiple Bens, one of whom is a time-traveller who has now left, after having shown Rey how to use the Force. (Completed.)
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: The Island Alternative Timelines [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639570
Comments: 16
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I got quite into writing the interaction between these two, and while it didn't fit in The Island for obvious reasons, I had to put it somewhere! 
> 
> This fic begins with the start of their conversation in The Island, so there's more continuity for a new reader (or an old reader who's forgotten some of this!) This is planned as a short, three chapter story.

Who are you?’

His face is concealed by his mask, and his voice echoes out into the desert. 

Rey stands there, calm. 

‘The thing you’re looking for is gone,’ she tells him. ‘The part of the map.’ 

He snarls. 

‘And so is Poe Dameron.’ 

He reaches out towards her with the Force, trying to choke her, just as Ben knew he would. Rey resists it, and he makes a noise of surprise. 

‘I can use the Force too,’ she tells him. She walks a step towards him, completely fearless. 

‘B _en_ ,’ she says, and he actually jumps. ‘Take off your mask.’ 

He doesn’t. 

‘Whoever you are,’ he tells her, ‘this is your last day alive.’ 

She just shrugs. 

‘You told me you’d say that. Or something like it, anyway. And now you’re going to say that I’ll never understand the Force I have the audacity to claim.’ 

Kylo Ren doesn’t answer that. He stretches out his hand, to hurt her, to break her. She’s equal to it. 

‘Well, you’re right,’ she tells him. ‘I don’t understand the Force. Not yet.’ 

She’s holding him back. 

‘I think I get some things,’ she tells him. ‘I get that the Force is powerful. I get that it makes _me_ powerful. But unlike you, I want to use that power to help people.’ 

‘You need a teacher,’ Kylo Ren tells her, even as he’s trying to choke her. 

‘I had one.’ 

‘Who?’ 

‘Ben Solo.’ 

There’s a pause. He lowers his hand, in evident surprise. 

‘Ben Solo is dead,’ Kylo Ren says, but his voice, even though the distorter, is confused. ‘He never met you.’ 

‘He did,’ Rey tells him. ‘I met him here. Just over there, in fact. Standing by his father’s ship. Take off your mask. I can’t talk to you like this.’ 

‘But who _are you_?’ Kylo Ren asks her again. 

Around them, encircling them, are the Stormtroopers he has brought with him. One of them moves to shoot at Rey, instinctive, but Ren waves him away with an irritated strike of his hand, sending him hurtling backwards with a cry. 

‘No one touch the girl,’ he says. The soldiers edge away, wary. 

‘My name’s Rey,’ she tells him. She stares at the metal of his helmet, as if she is looking straight to the person beyond it. ‘And I know who you are already, of course. I like you better when you’re not dressed like that.’ 

‘We haven’t met.’ 

‘We have,’ she tells him, and she smiles. ‘You took me on the Falcon. We went to Arath together. We walked by the lake and you taught me things.’ 

Kylo Ren shakes his head. 

‘And you saw me when I was talking to Leia,’ Rey adds. ‘You sensed me then.’ 

He moves to strike her, hard, but Rey’s equal to it. She holds him off, the effort of the resistance obvious on her face. 

‘Stop doing that,’ she tells him. ‘It’s really annoying.’ 

He snorts, something that might almost be a laugh although it’s bitter and cold. And then, finally, he does take off his mask. The release valve opens with a rush of air and he lifts the mask down so that she can see his face. He blinks. 

‘Hi,’ Rey says. 

Around them, soldiers, noise. 

‘Feel like getting out of here?’ she asks. ‘I’d prefer to talk in private.’ 

‘Sir,’ someone says, a senior officer. ‘Sir, I can’t recommend –‘ 

Since when has Kylo Ren ever listened to recommendations? The officer falls to the ground, choking, before he can even finish his sentence. Rey raises her eyebrows, her distaste obvious. 

‘You’ll come to my ship,’ he tells her. ‘We’ll talk there. You’ll die there.’ 

With his hand, he’s trying to drag her towards him, and although she does move slightly, she’s still resisting. 

‘Stop it, Ben,’ she says, not sounding particularly concerned. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ 

‘You should be.’ 

‘But I’m not,’ she says again. ‘You’re the one who’s frightened, not me.’ She exhales a sharp out breath, as if she is preparing herself. ‘I will come to your ship. I will talk to you. But I won’t die there. You know that.’ 

She radiates power. Even Ben can sense something of it: she’s blazing brilliant and bright. She’s him, and she’s Leia, and she’s herself. She moves towards Kylo Ren, and then she does the strangest and bravest thing: she holds out her hand for him to take. 

Ren stares at it, not understanding. 

‘I don’t know the way on your ship,’ Rey says, as if this were obvious. ‘You’ll have to show me.’ 

He takes it; of course he does. He always does and he always will. As their fingers meet, there’s a visible shock that runs through both of them, just as there was when it happened to Ben too, except Snoke’s not writing the story this time. 

Ben doesn’t know what they see, but he wonders if it’s the same for this Kylo Ren, more or less, as it was for him: Rey on the throne, her teeth bared, her face dark and cold, queen of the kingdom of the dead and the dying. 

Although perhaps not. Perhaps he sees himself; the memories of him that Rey has, the idea of him that she has, which is much too good and much too kind. 

Whatever it is, it makes Kylo Ren turn to her, looking directly at her. 

‘What’s your last name?’ he asks her. ‘Rey _what?_ ’ 

‘No idea,’ she tells him. ‘I never knew my parents.’ 

‘You’re looking for them.’ 

‘And yours are looking for you’ she tells him. ‘We could talk about that.’ 

Around them, an army swarms. Neither Kylo Ren nor Rey seems to notice. 

‘You need a saber,’ he tells her. ‘Why don’t you have one?’ 

‘If you’re planning to murder me, what does it matter?’ Rey asks. ‘Isn’t it better if I don’t have one?’ 

‘How can you be trained but not have a saber? Luke would never -’ 

‘I’ve never met your uncle. And you only had one saber,’ she tells him, interrupting. ‘Unfortunately. You let me borrow it, but I couldn’t keep it. I didn’t want to.’ 

‘We haven’t met.’ 

‘We _have_ ,’ she tells him. ‘You showed me around the Falcon. You showed me your dad’s collection of holo westerns. Some of them looked really… bad.’ 

‘Ben Solo is dead.’ 

‘Well,’ Rey says, ‘I don’t think so. And I don’t suppose _you’ve_ got a spare saber, have you? Not in red.’ 

‘No.’ 

‘We’ll have to get one then,’ she tells him. ‘I think I’d like one. Guess you can’t buy them in a shop? Is it all sacred quest stuff?’ 

‘Mostly,’ Ren says, and there’s an edge of what might be amusement in his voice although it’s jagged. ‘They can be made. I had mine made.’ 

‘Why’s it so… crackly?’ Rey says, looking it doubtfully. 

‘The crystal’s unstable.’ 

‘Ah, there’s a crystal,’ she says, ‘of course there is. Some of this stuff’s like a holo comic, you know. Completely unbelievable.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Kylo Ren says. ‘I know what you mean.’ 

\+ 

Together, they walk further into the ship. 

‘So, do I have to put my hand in a fire or something to get a saber?’ she asks, as they move. ‘Or pull it out of a stone? Just for advanced warning about how this whole thing works.’ 

Kylo Ren’s face is impassive, but if you knew him very, very well – not that anyone does - you’d detect amusement there, hidden deep below the surface, at this girl who has turned up out of the blue, half-mad with delusions that she knows him, demanding that he show her how to get a saber. 

She’s strong. That’s the reason she’s alive, and walking into his ship, the reason that he took her hand, reading her future and with it his own as he did so. Her power is radiant. An unexpected gift, especially coming from a forsaken and useless planet like Jakku. Power so bright that it could cut him. 

She can be turned. He saw it in her. As yet, she isn’t a Jedi. She barely understands what the word means. To her, it’s all some floating notion of Goodness and Kindness and Heroism. The usual shit. She doesn’t have the first idea about any of it. 

All she is right now a conduit for a power that is so great, so untamed and strong, that she could rip the galaxy in half with it, if she only knew how. That strikes him as a pretty compelling reason to keep someone alive. It strikes him as a compelling reason to answer her questions too. 

‘There’s no fire,’ he tells her. ‘Or stone. Just a place you have to go.’ 

‘Great. And what do I have to do there?’ 

‘You’ll be judged as worthy or unworthy,’ he says. ‘By your power.’ 

‘You think I’ll make it?’ 

He doesn’t answer that, except with a shrug. 

Metal clanks and grinds somewhere near. The noises of the military. Engines, machines. Things being built and prepared. For the last six years, he’s heard nothing but this. The endless ambition of the First Order. 

He's taking her to his quarters, which have the advantage of being slightly quieter and more private, and then he’s going to see if he can get into her head. Snoke will want to know what’s in there, and even before that, _he_ wants to know. He wants to rip her mind open like a fruit, prising out the flesh within. 

Most of all, he wants to know who the person is that she thinks was Ben Solo. The person she says has _trained_ her in the Force. He wants to take that knowledge from her and unpick it, thread by thread, until he finds the real truth of it. Whoever the person is who is pretending to be him, they’re dead. They were dead the moment she walked on this ship. 

‘We could go now,’ she suggests, her tone light. She’s taking in her surroundings, watchful but not wary. He can’t sense much fear in her. Curiosity, a slight edge of irritation, but not fear. 

‘No,’ he says. ‘I have things to attend to.’ 

‘Like what?’ 

‘Snoke requires me,’ he tells her, which is not a certain truth, but in one way or another, Snoke always requires him so it’s true in that sense. 

Her face curls slightly in distaste. 

‘Right, Snoke. Your master. The guy who stays on the base while you do the dirty work. That’s what you said he was.’ 

‘I would never speak of him that way. Whoever you think you were speaking to about this, it wasn’t Ben Solo.’ 

She shrugs. ‘Well, whoever _you_ think he was, I didn’t get the impression he liked Snoke much. And he certainly knew him.’ 

He’s leading her past long lines of soldiers. They’re invisible to him now. He can sense them if he tries, but why would he? Their thoughts are uniformly dull. He could kill them within a heartbeat. The only thing that is of interest is her. 

‘Come on,’ the girl says, and there’s a smile in her tone which he doesn’t understand. ‘Let’s just go. Who cares? How long is the ride, anyway?’ 

‘A few hours.’ 

‘And how long will it take them to judge whether or not I’m worthy?’ She grins. ‘I’m assuming that’s fairly obvious immediately.’ 

‘They regarded me as immediately worthy. I can’t say how long it would take them with you.’ 

‘You were less mean before,’ she tells him, although she doesn’t sound all that bothered about that either. ‘But okay, let’s say it takes them an hour. So, then we’ll still be back before the morning, and I’ll have a saber.’ 

‘Persuasion has no effect on me.’ 

She smiles. 

‘You’re right, I’m trying to persuade you. I had a really good time flying with you. It was fun.’ 

He doesn’t correct her that it never happened. She believes it did. He senses no deceit in her about that. Everything she tells him is entirely true to her. 

‘I don’t require a co-pilot,’ he tells her instead. 

‘Everyone needs a co-pilot. What do you do if you crash?’ 

‘I don’t crash.’ 

‘Good plan,’ she says, still half-smiling. ‘But I still think we should go. You said yourself that I should have a saber. It does feel … wrong, not to have one. I can’t explain it, but it’s -’ 

She pauses, not able to go further, apparently trying to shape her thoughts into a form that she can explain to him, as if he doesn’t already know what she feels and senses. 

‘I held the one that Ben had,’ she said, trying again. ‘Used it. And it was... afterwards, I knew where it was. Even when I didn’t have it any more, I could sense it. Is that normal?’ 

Is anything normal, he wonders, in this life? It’s an old question, and it’s not Kylo Ren’s question. He puts that thought away, closing it off before it can begin to take hold. 

‘It’s the conduit of your power,’ he says, exactly as any trainer would say, exactly at the standard line runs. ‘It’s the physical connection between you and the Force. You can’t be a Jedi without one.’ 

Hastily, he corrects himself. 

‘Or a Sith . Or -’ 

‘Or a random Force user,’ Rey suggests, her tone light. ‘With no clear allegiance at this point.’ 

They are at the doors to his quarters, and he unlocks them easily, welcoming her in. Inside, everything is clean and organised, just as it always is. He prefers order. He also prefers, at times, to have privacy. There are no cameras here. There are no unwanted eyes, no visitors of any kind. No one would dare to visit. 

‘And it’s normal,’ he tells her. He sets the mask he has been carrying down where it should be, on its plinth. ‘If you use a saber, you never lose the connection you have to it.’ 

She smiles, a little hesitantly. ‘Even if you’re just borrowing?’ 

‘Always.’ 

Her eyes move around the room, taking it in. 

‘You live here?’ 

‘In a manner of speaking.’ 

She seems relaxed, as she looks around the room. Her eyes drift to the mask, and then back to him. 

He’s suddenly conscious of how attractive she is in this moment. She is desirable. There’s no way around it, even if he wanted to avoid it, which he doesn’t. She is extremely beautiful. 

And he’s conscious too that in her head is a memory of fucking him, or not him, exactly, but the person she believed to be Ben Solo, who looks like he does. The person she believes he is. 

He can see it on her, can sense the way she had wanted it, the way she had leaned forward to kiss him, how slowly and well she kissed. Her lips are stained with it. Her memory is stained with it. Every time she looks at him, it’s there. 

He can sense all of it in her, but he chooses to believe that none of it happened. 

‘I want a saber,’ she tells him again, which strikes him as a largely unnecessary comment. 

‘I got that.’ 

She smiles. ‘No one’s listening. So, come on. Help me. Take me in a shuttle. Why not?’ 

He moves closer to her, reaching out, intending to take her memories. Enough of this: whatever she has, whatever knowledge, he needs it. But she only shakes her head, and raises her own hand. 

‘I’ll tell you,’ she says. ‘Whatever you think you need to know. If you take me to get a saber, you can _ask me_. You’re not going inside my head like a thief.’ 

He tries anyway. He is stronger than she is, and certainly better trained in this. She’s never hurt anyone. He can sense that too. Yet as he goes into her mind, he finds that her memories are there, but he can’t access them as easily as he would like. It’s all sealed. She projects images he doesn’t want: stupid things from her life on Jakku, trivial things. 

But then – the shock of it very sharp – there's his mother, her face looking at him, at Rey. She’s older than he’s ever seen her, and she’s smiling. How has the girl come by this memory? She’s never met Leia, has she? Has Leia been to Jakku? And if so, for what purpose? He tries to trace the connection, to find how she knows her, but he - 

His mother’s face is so, so clear and he has to get out. He can't do this. Emotion rises up in him, uncontrolled, unnamed. 

Abruptly, he terminates the connection between him and Rey. His hand, immediate, instinctive, is at her throat, choking her, trying to drain the life from her. She gasps, resisting it, pushing his intention away, but he moves towards her. If he can’t use the Force, there is still physical violence. It’s not what he prefers, but if needs must, he will do it. 

‘Stop,’ she says, even as he begins to raise his hand, her voice ringing clear. ‘Not that way. I’ll tell you what you want if you ask. You want to know how I met Leia. So ask me.’ 

‘I don’t have to ask,’ he tells her. ‘You know that I can take whatever I want.’ 

Her face is very determined. ‘Maybe not.’ 

‘I want to know how you met her,’ he says, furious. 

He’s very close to her now. He can see the whites of her eyes, the place on her lip that is ever so slightly chapped. The tiny smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. 

‘You, the other you, showed me how to sense with the Force,’ she tells him. ‘We were looking around, at the people nearby on Arath, and your mother sensed us. She was in my head, and yours. I think she was very surprised to see you.’ 

‘He senses this is only one small edge of the truth. 

‘There’s more than that.’ 

‘We saw her again later,’ Rey tells him. ‘We asked her to help us with making sure Poe Dameron never came here. And... to tell her where your uncle is.’ 

His reaction is instantaneous, white fury, desperate need. He’s stretching out his hand again, almost insensible. He needs that knowledge, and fast. 

‘You know where Luke is. You’ll give me that information.’ 

Rey fights him, struggling, keeping him out of her head. He is an onslaught of power. Everything he has, he is putting into taking it from her. 

‘After we get my saber ,’ she says, gasping. ‘If you take me to get it, I’ll tell you what Ben told me. I promise you that.’ 

‘Promises mean nothing to me,’ he tells her. He’s going to rip the knowledge of out her. He tries again, pushing into her mind, to be met with the same resistance, fierce and powerful. 

‘They mean something to me,’ she says. ‘You’ll never get it from me this way. Can’t you see that yet?’ 

‘I can get whatever I want.’ 

She raises her eyebrows. ‘Not from me, you can’t. I’ll trade you. One evening getting a saber for your uncle. You’ll never find him any other way. Your future self told me that. You never do find him.’ 

'You never met my future self.’ 

‘I did,’ she tells him. ‘Believe it or don’t. Make up whatever story you like in your head, Ben, to make the pieces fit. The easiest answer is that I’m telling you the truth.’ 

She sighs. 

‘You can sense me. You know I’m not a liar. You know if I make a trade with you, I’ll keep my side of the bargain. Spend an evening with me and I’ll give you Luke Skywalker.’ 

The idea has appeal, in some strange way. This is madness, all of It, but something about her makes me feel that mad things are more possible than usual. And she’s right: she will keep her side of the bargain. Is it easier than torturing her for information? Probably. He can rip her mind apart, but it incurs risks. People sometimes lose memories in the process, if he does it too hard. They get confused and muddled, and sullied. 

He wants her pure. He wants her power, clean and perfect and new. 

Afterwards, when she’s got her saber, she can submit to Snoke in full. She’ll be reborn, just as he was. They can kill Luke together. Or he can kill her as well, if things don’t work out. What does it matter? 

‘Fine,’ he tells her. ‘We can take my private ship. You’ll be my prisoner.’ 

She gives him a look of mild contempt, or perhaps better said irritation. 

‘I’m coming willingly, Ben,’ she says. ‘I suggested it. Learn when to take an advantage.’ 

He throws a Force punch at her, to try to subdue this spirit of hers, this insolence. It doesn’t work. She just resists it like it’s nothing. She seems to have an innate understanding of his power that’s very unsettling, like she can apprehend what he’s going to do before he’s done it. Somewhere in her mind is more than just where Luke is. There are other answers there. 

‘No,’ she tells him. The Force in her crackles and burns so bright. ‘I’ll come with you, but I’m not spending the next seven hours fighting you.’ 

He grimaces, contempt on his face at this idea. 

‘Truce?’ she says. ‘Not that we were ever at war.’ 

He doesn’t answer that, because he doesn’t believe in the concept of truces. There’s only war, there’s the survival of power, and the survival of strength and - 

‘Yes?’ 

She looks at him, and he senses affection in her, which he doesn’t understand, because he met her ten minutes ago, and he’s not exactly being friendly to her. It’s just _there_. It’s disarming. 

No one ever looks at him like that: open and soft and non-defensive. It’s her memories of the person she thinks was Ben Solo, clouding what she sees in him. That’s all it can ever be. 

Still, she’s right. It’ll be a long seven hours if all they’re going to do is buffet the Force back and forth between them, neither ever really gaining the advantage, until they are both exhausted. There’s no point to that. 

‘I won’t attack you,’ he tells her. ‘Assuming you don’t attack me.’ 

‘Great,’ Rey says. ‘Lead the way.’ 

\+ 

She flies pretty well. He travels invariably alone, but in this case, he finds that her company is tolerable and her assistance is useful, even if she does seem to think that he’s Ben Solo. She doesn’t actually seem insane in any way other than that she’s got confused memories of the recent past. 

‘Perhaps Luke convinced you that we met,’ he suggests, as he thinks of it. ‘He used the Force to rearrange your memories.’ 

Rey rolls her eyes. ‘Is that the sort of thing he would do?’ 

Honestly, _no_ . It’s not the sort of thing Luke would do at all, but - 

‘I can see no other way to explain it.’ 

‘Except that it happened.’ 

‘Ben Solo is dead,’ he tells her again. ‘I have his memories, and I know that he didn’t meet you.’ 

They are drifting quietly in space, flying towards Veran. Just the two of them, surrounded by the endlessness of the galaxy. He hasn’t mentioned to Snoke that they’re here. He hasn’t mentioned it to anyone. 

He’s just gone with her, and he’s still not sure exactly why he has. 

‘He was from the future,’ she says, repeating the same story. 

‘That’s impossible.’ He shakes his head. ‘He was a Force projection from Luke, or… someone. A hallucination in your mind that has diseased you. Just a trick.’ 

‘He really wasn’t. He was you. He looked and sounded exactly the same as you.’ She reflects. ‘Except he wasn’t dressed in black, he smiled, and he couldn’t use the Force.’ 

‘None of that happened.’ 

‘He said you’d know if I were lying. You’d sense it.’ 

‘It’s true that you’re not lying. But people can be deluded.’ 

‘I’m not deluded.’ 

‘That’s what you would say if you were deluded.’ 

‘Well then how can I prove I’m not deluded?’ 

‘You can’t.’ 

‘Doesn’t seem fair.’ She stretches slightly, breaking the conversation. ‘Hey, sorry to ask, but is there a fresher on board? I need to take a shower.’ 

He is surprised by this, but offers no comment as to why, just inclines his head rightwards, towards a small door. ‘Through there.’ 

As she walks off, he wonders why her question was surprising. It takes him a few minutes to realise it’s because it means she isn’t afraid of him. People who are in fear of their life don’t ask to take a shower. They don’t ask anything at all, other than ‘please don’t hurt me’ and ‘let me go’ and ‘why are you doing this?’ 

She obviously harbours no secret belief that he’ll kill her, not even buried deep down somewhere in the darkest recesses of her mind. If she did, she’d stay frozen on the seat, hyper-aware, unwilling to let him out of her sight. She might act bravely, but she’d never, ever be so unguarded. Fear tells. It always tells. He’s seen enough of it to know when it’s there. 

As it is, he hears the sound of the water running and her feet splashing on the tiles. If she’s afraid, he can't sense it. 

It’s been a long, long time since he was with someone who wasn’t afraid of him. The experience is oddly calming. 

\+ 

He meditates, as he often does to pass the time on these boring journeys, but he’s not found any sort of peace or focus from it yet. His thoughts are too distracted. It keeps coming back to her. Who is she? She says she’s never met Luke, and he believes her, but then how is it that she can use the Force like this? There’s no one else who could have taught her, no one alive anyway. 

Unless there’s some other Jedi trainer out there, someone under the radar, but that’s ridiculous because he knew _everyone_ . That was what made it all so easy to do what he did. He was at the centre of it all, which was the very best place from which to rip everything apart. 

Luke knew everyone . Leia knew everyone. The best teachers, all the ones who’d one day come to the temple, were family friends. All dead now. 

No, there’s no other Jedi teacher out there. There is Luke, and there is him. No one else could have taught her what she knows. 

It must be Luke, and yet she is not lying when she says that she has never met him. 

The answer is annoyingly obvious, but he doesn’t want it and can’t accept it. He doesn’t become Ben Solo in the future. He doesn’t meet this woman in the future. That possibility has to be discounted. 

Ben Solo never went to Jakku , he tells himself, firmly. He never met Rey. He was a stupid, worthless fucking Jedi brat and now he’s dead, and that’s just – 

The door swings open. She’s back from the shower, then, her hair loose and – incredibly – her feet bare. 

‘All okay?’ she says, as she approaches. ‘That was a good shower. I’ve felt grimy ever since that rathtor thing nearly got me with its tongue.’ 

‘What’s that?’ 

‘There was a rathtor on the Falcon,’ she tells him. ‘It’d got loose. Not sure what it was doing there.’ 

This doesn’t surprise him a great deal. 

‘Han Solo often smuggles dangerous items,’ he says, flatly. 

‘Yeah, and he should clean up.’ Rey sits back down, stretching out her feet. ‘It was really grimy on there. And does he smoke? Because it smelled quite smoky. Another reason for the shower.’ 

He remembers that about his father. 

‘He invariably lies that he’s stopped,’ he tells her. 

‘Oh.’ Rey shrugs. ‘Well, it definitely _was_ a lie. But hey, his ship did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. Who cares if he smokes. And anyway.’ She turns to him. ‘I was thinking in the shower. If I’m supposed to show my power to these people, do you mind if we practise?’ 

‘Practise?’ 

‘Yeah. Like I did with Ben. He showed me some stuff, but I still don’t get how to do the jumping thing, for example.’ 

_With Ben._

It isfucking madness, but he can’t keep saying that to her. The best is to go along with it, at least for now. Until she has her precious saber. Until he can define the limits of her power. 

‘What thing is that?’ 

‘Sort of… ‘ she tries to explain it. ‘He leapt into the ocean, onto a really far away rock. He jumped much higher and further than a person could normally jump. I was holding his hand, so he took me with him, but on my own, I don’t know. I’m not sure I can do that.’ 

‘That’s not difficult.’ 

‘Maybe not,’ she says. ‘But I don’t know how. Can you show me?’ 

He looks around, dubiously. 

‘It’s a tiny ship. I don’t see where you’d go. And in any case, I don’t regard that as a useful skill.’ 

‘Can’t I just jump here?’ 

‘No,’ he tells her. ‘You have to be _going_ somewhere. It’s about the destination you want to reach, not the jump itself.’ 

Rey does try then, he thinks, to jump, but of course, it’s just a normal jump. She makes a neat little bouncing jump, landing back on her feet easily. She blinks. 

‘I was thinking about the ceiling,’ she offers, as he looks at her, doubt obviously written across his face. Maybe she really is deluded, and it’s worse than he thought. 

‘Why would you want to go there?’ 

‘You said to think about a destination.’ 

‘Yes, one to which you want to go. The Force responds to need and intention. You don’t need to go to the ceiling. Forget about jumping. Your lack of saber knowledge is the problem. You can already use the Force adequately.’ 

‘Can I?’ 

‘You’re not dead,’ he tells her. ‘ So I’d say so.’ 

She smiles. 

‘Ben told me that too. That if you hadn’t killed me in the first five minutes, it’d probably be fine.’ 

‘Whoever he was, he was right.’ 

He offers her the hilt of his saber , and she can have no idea that he has _never_ done this, that he would have killed anyone who asked him to. He doesn’t share. 

‘Practice,’ he tells her. 

She takes it, gingerly. The memories of all the people it has killed linger within it, he knows, and holding it apparently makes her feel sick. She gags, dry retching. 

‘Overcome your feelings about that,’ he says, coldly, and she exhales, angry, exasperated. 

‘How can I?’ 

‘I did.’ 

‘ No you didn’t’ she tells him, and there’s real heat in her voice. ‘You just don’t choose to think about it. That’s not the same thing at all.’ 

‘It’s possible that they won’t make one for you if you’ve never really used one,’ he says, ignoring this. ‘They’ll expect you to be _good_.’ 

She’s still holding the saber , hesitantly. Her grip on it is half-hearted, to say the least. ‘I’m not going to have to perform a show, am I?’ 

‘Not exactly.’ 

‘Then what?’ 

‘They’ll be able to sense it. Your knowledge.’ 

‘It hurts, Ben,’ she tells him. ‘I don’t like this saber . You shouldn’t use it either. It’s corrupted.’ 

‘It’s imbued with strength.’ 

‘Who are these people, anyway? Are you sure they can make sabers that don’t feel like this?’ 

He shrugs. ‘I asked them to make it like this. They offered me other options. I think they’re neutral on it.’ 

‘And you didn’t kill them.’ 

‘Why would I?’ 

She just looks at him. _Why would he,_ indeed. 

She’s still holding the saber loosely. Without warning, he waves his hand, and several things fly at her, hard. He’s not a kind or good person. They’re sharp tools; things that you don’t want near your face. But as he knew she would, she understands it immediately, uses the saber to bat them away, her grip hardening. Amazing how your squeamishness fades under pressure, he thinks. Amazing how you can get over visions of mass murder if it’s to save your life. 

She’ll turn. Soon enough, of course she will. The thought is an inspiring one, so he ups the tempo of it, throwing other things at her with the Force – whatever there is on the ship that is to hand is good enough for this. She moves fast. She's _good_. 

It’s been a long, long time since he saw anyone who was any good. Snoke’s not that good, not really. He’s more about the control and command, less about the fight itself. 

Something almost, almost hits her – a piece of corrugated metal, some broken engine compartment with a sharp, jagged edge, but she ducks, swerving out of its path. He lifts it back up, so it could cut her throat, and it glints, dangerous, on the approach. She manages by the skin of her teeth to hit it back towards him with the saber . It’s a hard hit. She’s throwing it at him. 

He sweeps it out of the way, irritated. Her own expression is irritated too. 

‘Your other self’s a better trainer,’ she says, breathing hard. His saber’s still raised in her hand. He tries to pull it back from her with the Force, but she resists it. 

‘Ask me,’ she says, angrily. ‘You don’t just get to take everything you want.’ 

‘You’re strong,’ he tells her. But then he pushes much, much harder, in a way that’s designed to really, really hurt her, and she gasps. The saber flies neatly to him. ‘But I think my other self, as you call him, didn’t show you the very worst I can do.’ 

‘Probably not,’ she agrees. ‘He was probably being kind.’ 

‘I’m not kind.’ 

‘You could be,’ she tells him. ‘If you chose it. It’s all just choice, Ben. Not more or less than that. You told me that too.’ 

‘Yeah, but I’m not choosing it.’ 

‘Clearly.’ She moves to stretch on the long sofa that he never uses. The ship’s furnished for travel, or better said for a group of people travelling together. It’s luxurious, but he scarcely uses it. What does he need it for? 

‘You think I can hold a saber well enough for these people?’ she asks him. 

‘I think so.’ 

‘How long do we have before we get there?’ 

He looks. ‘Two hours. Just over.’ 

Rey sighs. ‘You know how to play chess? We could get a set from the holoprint .’ 

Nominally, Kylo Ren doesn’t know how to play chess. He doesn’t play at all. But – 

‘Sure,’ he says, boredly . It’s been years since he played. It’s been years since anyone asked. 

‘I play white,’ she tells him. ‘Fairly obviously.’ 

‘I play black,’ he tells her, and if he remembered how, he’d smile. ‘Fairly obviously.’ 

\+ 

As they play, she wonders what he’s thinking about it. It’s probably not the game itself, given that she has almost no skill. She played for the first time ever yesterday with Ben, and it was obvious he was good at it, or he used to be. 

‘Who taught you to play?’ she asks, as she moves a piece. 

‘Does it matter?’ 

‘No. Just curious.’ 

‘Luke. And my father.’   
  
‘Oh. Which of the two was better?’ 

He thinks about it. 

‘ Actually, I think Leia was always the best. But Han Solo cheated.’ 

He moves one of his own pieces, and it blocks her into a corner. 

‘And I suppose this Luke never cheated?’ 

‘I very much doubt it. Paragon of virtue,’ Ren tells her, contempt in his tone, but he sounds so much like Ben Solo. 

It’s an embittered and troubled version, but it’s nevertheless him. 

It’s always there, she thinks. That shadow. Sometimes it’s so visible it could never be anything else. Sometimes it’s so faint you can barely see it. The only thing it never is, is absent. Ben ebbs and flows out of this guy’s personality all the time. It’s a nonsense to say they're two separate people. This is Ben pretending to be someone else. 

‘And did you cheat? When you were a kid, I mean?’ 

‘No,’ he tells her. Absurdly, he’s _offended_. ‘Of course I didn’t.’ 

‘Okay.’ 

She moves again. 

‘That’s a shitty move,’ he tells her, looking at it. ‘I don’t think you want to do that.’ 

‘I’m actually new to the game,’ she says. ‘I played for the first time in my life yesterday .’ 

‘With ‘me’, I suppose,’ he says, contempt in his tone. 

‘Yeah.’ 

‘Well I didn’t teach you very well,’ he tells her. ‘If you move there, I can win the game in two moves.’ 

‘What’s a good move?’ 

He uses the Force to redress her mistake, the piece lifting neatly and landing where it should, blocking at least one of his options. 

‘That’s just showing off,’ she tells him, raising her eyebrows. ‘Misusing your sacred power.’ 

‘It’s not sacred. It’s just a way to get the things you want. You’ll learn that.’ 

He moves, his own piece this time, and with his hand, not the Force though. She studies the board, and then she uses the Force too, manipulating one of her pieces to move as well. 

‘I still don’t think I’m going to get what I want,’ she tells him. ‘I think you’re going to win anyway.’ 

The corner of his lip moves slightly upwards, like he’s trying to smile, but he can’t remember how. It’s an odd thing to see. It makes her feel bad for him. Ben told he her didn’t deserve any sympathy, and maybe in one way he was right. The problem is, she feels it anyway. She feels so much sympathy for him she thinks she could drown in it. 

They finish the game eventually and she loses badly, but to say it’s her second time ever, not that badly. 

\+ 

Midway through their second game, which is far more intense, there’s a noise, worse than anything she’s ever heard. It’s terrifying. The whole ship shakes, and there’s a sound of something breaking - 

In seconds, faster than anything she’s seen, he’s on his feet and at the controls. He almost _flies_ , he’s so fast. She can sense it. He's using the Force, although she doesn’t know how he is. Something’s changing. Outside, the stars are turning upside down and around, and everything’s difficult, she’s falling, can’t hold on, can’t - 

She finds herself standing improbably upright, and he’s raising his hand towards her. It takes her a second to realise he’s holding her up. The effort doesn’t appear to cost him much, because even while he does, he’s sending out commands, pressing buttons. The screen flashes an ominous red and he swears. 

She just clings to the ground beneath her feet and hopes. The world’s too dizzying. She looks at him, and he looks similarly queasy, but he’s holding on too, somehow - 

And then, all at once, everything stops. There’s no spin or noise. She can stand and move. They are both feet to the ground on exactly the same ship as before. Everything is quiet. He breathes out, and then in again, very sharply. 

‘Fuck’s sake,’ he says. ‘Throw trap. Why the fuck did you -’ 

His moods seem to come quickly. He’s angry, very, now. He’s bristling with rage, and although she’s not afraid of him, she’s afraid of that rage. She’s afraid that he’s going to burn something with it: himself, her, their ship, or all three. 

She knows what a throw trap is. It’s pulls a ship through a vortex, throwing it far out in the distant reaches of the galaxy. Usually in a condition that’s broken beyond repair, so the people in the ship, assuming they’re alive, die afraid and far from home. 

Guerrilla warfare. They don’t always work, she knows. Risky, messy. You run the risk of the ship surviving the throw, and driving straight back to you and killing you doubly hard. You run the risk of transporting it somewhere that, unbeknownst to you, is convenient for the ship. Plus: 

‘Aren’t they illegal ?’ 

He raises his eyebrows, as if to say _who_ _are you asking about that ._

‘Yeah, stupid question.’ She sighs. ‘What’s damaged? Where are we?’ 

‘No idea.’ 

His tone’s clipped. 

‘Stay,’ he tells her, and she feels the Force, rising up, trying to pin her to the spot. ‘I’m going to look at the damage. Don’t fucking go anywhere.’ 

He pads off, all irritation. She hears noises from below deck. The sound of engine tests, thudding, thrumming. A sigh of exasperation. The smashing of something, perhaps a fist, against a wall. The Force ripples ominously. She feels it like a tear in the fabric of the air, as if something’s being ripped apart. It hurts. It’s very sharp and very painful. 

She walks down to him, ignoring his command. Pushes open the door to the engine room to find him apparently about to bring down part of the metal wall. He’s already ripped up some of the floor, so the tiles are gaping, exposing the wiring and metal below at the heart of the ship. 

She raises her hand, trying to stop him. He growls, and pushes back, very hard against her. She feels the air tighten about her throat, like he’s - 

She shakes it off, the way Ben taught her. _Easy if you know_ _how_ , he told her. _Probably why I killed everyone who knew how._

She’d half not believed him about the killing people bit. 

_Stay the fuck out_ , he thinks, and his voice rings in her head, cold and furious. She believes it now. 

She takes a breath. 

_If you destroy the ship, we both die. What the hell are you doing?_

The room is shaking. There are clattering pieces of metal, jangling, jarring noises. That’s him doing that. 

_Stop,_ she thinks. _This is ridiculous._

There’s a frisson of pure, white hot rage. 

_Stop_ , she says again. _Ben, you cannot destroy this ship._

He doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s so angry. She thinks about the other Ben, trying to keep her own calm. Walking with him. Kissing him. The way he smiled at her. The thought is a steadying one. It reminds of what her mission is here, which is not to get a lightsaber, or not only that. 

‘Where are we?’ she asks, out loud. 

‘Marovian Wastes,’ he says, the words furious. ‘Way fucking out.’ 

She doesn’t know where that is, but it doesn’t matter. 

‘How long’s it going to take to get back?’ 

‘Probably around two weeks.’ 

She blinks. 

‘Two _weeks_?’ 

‘There’s no propulsion generator anymore,’ he tells her. ‘So we can’t go into hyperdrive. And there’s nowhere here to land to repair it, because this is a fucking wasteland. So yeah. Two weeks. Maybe ten days if we’re very lucky.’ 

‘Two weeks,’ she repeats. ‘Is there even enough food?’ 

He looks as if the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. ‘I expect so. Everything’s always well stocked.’ 

_Spoken like a person_ _who’s_ _never been hungry,_ she thinks. _Spoken like a person who’s never had to fight for food._

‘What are we supposed to do for two weeks?’ 

‘Fly back,’ he tells her. ‘We’ll get there okay. It’s just sky-crawling. There’s no threat out here. Just a huge fucking waste of time.’ 

But...’ 

‘I’m going back up,’ he tells her. ‘I’ll chart the course back. Not that we have navigation.’ 

‘And you’re so certain it’ll be the right way?’ 

‘The Force guides me,’ he tells her, flatly. ‘I know I don’t die here. I know that we fly this ship out eventually. I know that we survive. So yeah, I know it’s the right way.’ 

‘And the Force can’t... summon up a solution to this?’ 

He grimaces. ‘It doesn’t work like that. That’s an ignorant understanding of it.’ 

‘Yeah, I learned about all this _yesterday_.’ 

‘Not my problem,’ he tells her. He stands up. ‘I’m going to see what I can fix. If anything. Don’t follow me, and I mean it this time. Don’t come near me. I’m prepared to kill you if you do. You should know that. I’ll do it.’ 

He’s almost bouncing off the walls with energy, fury, frustration, she has no idea. She doesn’t particularly want to follow him. 

For herself she has to think about it. Two weeks is a hell of a lot more than she bargained for. The idea was more to get the saber, to talk to him, to try to … well, if she’s honest, to try get more time with Ben. Somehow. To just have that little bit longer with him, any way she could. She’d thought Kylo Ren would be closer to the Ben she met. In fact, he’s only something like him, a shadow of him, and, right now, looking forward to two weeks trapped together, a shadow isn’t anywhere near enough. 

She needs to get to Luke Skywalker, like Ben told her to do. She also needs to get to Han Solo and Leia Organa, also like he told her to do. 

She checks the systems for herself, as best she can from here. He’s quite right: there’s no propulsion, and thus no hyperdrive. This is going to be a long, old-fashioned crawl to home. Some of the secondary systems are out. Nothing life-threatening. 

In a way, they’re incredibly lucky. They’re just shaken and beaten up. There’s still life support. Oxygen. Fuel. They can still _f_ _ly_. She supposes that she’s got Ren to thank for that. The way he used the Force, the way he can manipulate things, makes her sure that he’s controlled this. He’s kept them both alive, but she’s not naïve enough to think that she was the main concern for him. Her survival was merely incidental to his own. 

No matter what thoughts she has, only one seems to have any truth. There’s nothing to do but keep going. 

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the lovely comments on this AU of an AU and I am so happy that people are enjoying it! I started working on this ages ago so I had quite a lot of material to edit and tweak, hence the very quick update. This does not mean I am ignoring the main fic - stay tuned on that front!

She thinks, is quite certain, that he’s smashing something apart with his  saber again. There’s a noise that suggests that’s what he’s doing, anyway: the whirring, grinding of what must be a  saber cutting through metal. The sound of something smashing to the ground. 

It worries her. She hadn’t fully understood. Ben had tried to tell her, but he was safe and she trusted him, so she hadn’t believed it when he’d told her some of the things he’d done as  Kylo Ren. He’d shown her, putting the images direct into her mind, but it hadn’t been enough to convince her, not really. It was just too difficult to believe that he had been the sort of man who might run a  saber through metal on the ship that’s keeping them both alive, in the middle of a wasteland with no help possible. For the second time. 

She stays where she is, and closes her eyes. She tries to sense with the Force, like Ben taught her, but without him there, it’s hard. She  sort of understands some of the things he did, but only with him  _ there  _ can she actually do them herself _.  _ She can’t really find anything at all now. Just a humming, buzzing feeling, which she suspects is  Kylo Ren, and a swirling energy around them both, like a fog. She can’t see beyond it, can’t turn it into a  _ shape _ of person the way Ben could...

She tries to at least think about good things. There’s not a lot there, but there’s something. Her parents were good people. She believes that. They’ll come back, they will, they will. Ben’s a good person. He took her on the Falcon. He -

This isn’t really meditation. It’s just her thinking. That Ben is gone; in his words ‘faded out’. He was a visitor, he said. A sort of memory or dream from the future. It’s no good thinking about him as a source of help. She’s still here. She’s still solid. And he’s left his ghost, the one who’s smashing up the ship, who might kill her and himself. 

She can’t go that way, she realises. If she starts to think of  Kylo Ren as the ghost, and Ben as the real person, they’ll both drown.  _ He _ is the real person too. Underneath, somewhere in there, he’s got the capacity to be the person she wants to be with. 

She tries again, to lift the fog around her. There’s nothing. The mist is there, and if she really  concentrates, she can almost see something that might be a person, but she just -

Suddenly, there’s a noise. She opens her eyes, sharply.  Kylo Ren is there in front of her. How fast has he moved to get here? She hadn’t heard him. How silently does he move, and how dangerous does that make him? 

‘Don’t fucking do that,’ he tells her, and she can see that he really has been shredding  stuff to pieces. He looks drained and wired at the same time, exhausted and brimming with an electric, horrible energy.

‘Do what?’

‘Start messing around with the Force, for fuck’s sake. I can sense what you’re doing. You’re shitty at it, whatever that was.’

‘Yeah,’ she says, not bothering to fight him. ‘I can’t do it. Ben showed me, but I -

‘What exactly did  _ he _ show you?’

‘How to sense the world around me. But when I try, it’s like a fog. Or mist, or something. I can’t see beyond it.’

He grimaces, and roughly, without ceremony, takes her hand in his. It still feels the same. Warm, reassuringly solid. 

‘Follow,’ he says, shortly. And then he closes his eyes, and she does too.

It’s not the same, because they’re not sharing her power. There are two of them, intermingled. Him and her. His rage is there, burning and furious. Darkness. But he still shows her what he sees, and it’s ….

The space around them is empty and cold. There’s no life. The ruins of ships that didn’t make it out, floating quiet and calm in their endless sleep. Somewhere very, very distant, there is a kind of settlement. Lifeforms there, rubbing against each other. Hopes, desires. Work, death, life. A simple place; subsistence, labour. She understands that type of life well enough.

More distant still, that same white spark that she’d seen before, the thing that must be this guy Luke. Wherever you are, it seems, he’s there somewhere. It’s clear that Kylo Ren doesn’t like to focus on that.

Something else, equally distant. A cottony fuzz that feels like it’s rotten. Decay. She doesn’t want to touch it, to go close to it. She shudders, and Kylo Ren, in her mind, seems to understand why. He pushes it away, with no more effort than if he were breathing. The thing dissipates, or at least fades from her thoughts. 

She opens her eyes, and he’s there, staring at her.

‘Better?’ he asks, slightly sardonic. She shakes her head.

‘What was  that thing?’

‘Snoke.’

She doesn’t even like the word. She shivers.

‘It feels like he’s dead,’ she says, aware the comment is strange, although to Kylo Ren it doesn’t seem to register as such.

‘He always looks like that to me now. You saw him as I saw him.’

‘He didn’t always?’

‘No.’

‘What did he used to look like?’

‘Power,’ he tells her. ‘Strength.’

‘Less like rotten fruit, then?’

He quirks his lip upwards, into what must pass for a sort of smile to him, although it doesn’t to her. She wonders if he ever smiles. Or laughs, or reacts to things normally, or touches people, or is touched by them. If he  _ talks _ to anyone. What sort of life he  has.

At least he’s calmer now. She ventures a question.

‘Were you just smashing up the  ship? Because I heard - ‘

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘It helps me to focus. But then you  interrupted me with your shitty Force meditation.’

‘Sorry,’ she tells him. He  shrugs. ‘I’ll try to be less shitty if I do it again.’

His tone is fractionally softer. ‘You didn’t understand that you have to have a focal point. You can’t just sense everything all at once. You find one thing, and you branch out from it.’

‘What do you use as a focal point in the middle of nowhere?’

‘I don’t need one anymore.’

‘But I do, so what am I supposed to do?’

‘Use Luke,’ he tells her, shortly, which doesn’t make any sense.

‘The Luke you want to kill?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ben, I don’t really get...’

‘You don’t have to get it,’ he says. His tone closes off, all at once, like a light going out. ‘And I’m going to sleep. There’s nothing else to do. Take the seat, if you intend to rest as well.’

‘I - okay -’

‘It’ll fly,’ he tells her, sensing her hesitation about the ship, perhaps, or otherwise expressing his own doubts. ‘There’s nothing to stay awake for in the dead zone. And I can sense things long before they’ll come onto the radar of this ship. There’s nothing out here.’

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘Once,’ he tells her. He doesn’t volunteer any more information and she doesn’t ask. 

‘Don’t use the Force when I’m sleeping,’ he adds. ‘It’ll wake me up.’

With which, he walks away from her, down into what she supposes must be the sleeping compartment of this tiny ship.

+

The morning looks exactly like the night. It’s hard to acclimatise to it. She’s never been in space for this long. She’s used to mornings looking like sunrise, but here it’s only the blackness of cold night, of nothing-ness. It’s hard to know what time it is, or if she’s slept. The seat is small and uncomfortable, but she thinks she’s managed to sleep, at least for a few fitful hours. 

He’s already awake when she opens her eyes, and at the other side of the small main room. He seems to be practising something, some sort of cyclical movement, not a dance, nor a stretch, but something  between the two. He’s purposeful, and he’s very, eerily quiet: she hadn’t heard him come here, nor start this. He really moves like a ghost. 

She watches him. He’s lost in whatever he’s doing, moving steadily, calmly. It’s something he must have done a thousand times or more, she thinks. He moves like it’s automatic. He doesn’t seem to be even  really conscious of what he’s doing.

She follows it, learning, watching. It seems oddly familiar to her, although she’s never seen anything like this before. Left foot, right. Arm bent. Twisting right and down, and then up again. She knows this pattern. She’s caught up in it, the movement echoing through her. Like water, like life. This is -

Abruptly, he stops. He stretches slightly, and looks towards her.

‘You know this,’ he tells her, not wishing her good morning or anything so pedestrian. ‘How?’

She sits up, shaking her hair loose, feeling unclean from the lack of quality sleep, real bed, or change of clothes.

‘I don’t know,’ she tells him. ‘I just... I was watching you, and I knew it. What is it?’

‘Forms,’ he tells her. ‘Training.’

‘You’ve done it a lot.’

‘Yes.’

She senses his mind, reaching out to her, trying to read her. He’s looking for her memories, tracing the shape of her thoughts. He wants to know how she knows what he’s doing, but there’s no answer to that. She herself has not the first idea. 

‘Stop,’ she tells him, fighting to hold him off. ‘I already told you. You don’t have to go in there like a thief.’

He ignores this, still pushing, searching. He just takes what he wants, she realises. That’s how he’s been living for so long. 

‘I don’t know why I can follow what you’re doing,’ she tells him. ‘Until I met Ben, by the Falcon on  Jakku , I was no one. I’ve never met Luke Skywalker.’

He shakes his head, frustrated. 

‘I could hurt you,’ he tells her. ‘I can break you in time.’

‘Yeah, except it’d be a lot of time,’ she tells him. ‘You’d most likely end up turning me into a crazy person, and then you’d kill me. What’s the point in that when you could just ask me what you want? I won’t lie to you.’

‘Perhaps I just enjoy killing people,’ he says, and his tone’s too light, too flippant. ‘Perhaps I enjoy sending them crazy.’

‘I doubt it. It seems to me like it’s more something you just do to get what you want. And I’m not sure killing me would get you anything that you want.’

He doesn’t answer that. Instead, he carries on, resuming with the forms, seemingly completely oblivious to her. She leaves him to it and looks for something to eat. There are day rations, more than enough of them if they’re both sparing, and she takes part of one and some water. 

He’s right that they won’t starve, although it’s possible they’ll die of boredom or worse, of each other. 

+

‘You slept badly,’ he says, interrupting her thoughts, coming into the room behind her. They’ve not spoken since she woke up, and in the hours since then she’s been quietly looking at the engine, wondering what repairs she can make, trying to fix at least something. God knows what he’s been doing, but at least whatever it was, it was quiet. ‘You can’t sleep on the seat every night. We’ll switch tonight.’

‘Fine. Thanks.’

‘You should rest,’ he adds. ‘I want to train you tomorrow.’

‘In what, exactly?’

He does that thing again, the would-be smile that comes over like a grimace of pain.

‘In the forms you already know but you don’t know how you know.’

‘Ah.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be quite easy, since you have prior knowledge.’

‘I’m glad you’re so confident,’ she tells him, joking. He looks blankly on, like he hasn’t understood her. His social abilities seem to come and go, she thinks. There are times when it’s almost all right, and  there are times when he behaves like there’s scarcely a person left alive in there. 

It doesn’t really matter. He just is who he is. 

‘Chess?’ she suggests, because there’s nothing else to do. He just nods.

+

She dreams that night and the dreams are ash and dust and a dead world. There is a man, and his face is old and dead, and he’s full of hatred. He’s looking for her, but he already knows her. She knows him, too. Somehow. 

He’s reaching out for her, and his hand is desiccated, withered to nothing. If he touches her, she’ll die. His eyes are red-rimmed and wicked.

_ Rey _ , he says, and the word echoes and echoes.  _ I’ve waited. _

Her mouth opens to scream, but with a jolt, she’s awake in the ship, sleeping in the tiny, windowless compartment. She feels nauseous. 

Before she can even sit up, here is there, running towards her, so fast. Was he asleep? He’s dressed, so maybe he wasn’t, but she can’t tell with him. He might sleep with his eyes open, for all she knows. He might not really sleep at all.

‘You screamed,’ he says. ‘Why?’

She sits up. He looks at her, and there’s something like worry there. A memory of what worry would look like, if only he could remember it. 

‘I had a dream,’ she tells him. ‘There’s a man, on a throne. He’s very old. It’s that place you showed me, with the giant statues. The cold place.’

He knows the place she’s dreaming about, although he’s never seen a man there, nor a throne. He dreams about it too, once in a while, and he always wakes up with the feeling that it’s more than just a nightmare, although he has plenty of those too.

‘What sort of man?’ 

‘He’s… I don’t know.  Just old. But his skin’s all dried out, like he’s died. He’s got red eyes. He looks like the life’s been drained from him.’

‘Did he speak?’

‘Just my name, and that he was waiting for me.’ She tries to remember it. ‘I was… I was walking there. There’s a long walkway, and it’s full of those giant statues. I don’t know who they are. It’s so cold, and it tastes like…’

‘Ash,’ he finishes. ‘And death.’

She shudders.

‘You were there,’ she tells him. ‘Not in the dream, I mean. It was a vision you showed me. You were walking there, and you said you had to  _ kill him _ . Who’s him?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been there.’

‘I’m afraid,’ she says. ‘I’m afraid of that place and I don’t know why.  More afraid than I’ve ever been of anything. Even more than when I first saw you, in the snow.’

‘You didn’t see me in the snow.’

‘I did,’ she says. ‘That was another vision. You had your mask on.’

He ignores this. He doesn’t trust her visions.

‘I dream of that place too,’ he tells her. ‘It’s underground, I think. They talk to me. They tell me to walk further in, but I don’t know the way yet.’

‘I wouldn’t want to hear their voices. What do they sound like?’

‘Angry. They sound like all the  –‘

He shakes his head, but she understands.

‘Like all the voices in your head,’ she finishes, and she knows that it’s the right answer although he just shrugs.

‘And I said I had to kill him?’ Ren repeats, thinking. ‘I mean, the … man you thought was me said that.’

She’s tired, and she’s afraid. She reaches out to him, puts her hand on him. He flinches, but he doesn’t draw away.

‘Take the memory,’ she says. ‘If you want it that badly.’

He does, and he sees what she saw, the memory that Ben gave to her.

_ It’s cold and he’s alone, walking towards the voice. He is afraid, deep down, in that moment. He’s going to kill him. He’s going to kill Rey too, if he must. There can only ever be one person who rules the galaxy, and if that’s a lonely dream, if the thought brings him no pleasure, then so much the worse for the galaxy and for himself. He’s already killed so many. He’s killed Ben Solo. His true purpose is to kill. He is not a human being. He is not, is not. The thought accompanies him like a heartbeat. Not human, not, not.  _

_ He is a monster, and what can monsters do but hunt and kill? With a snarl, he raises his  _ _ saber _ _.  _

‘I’m not  Kylo Ren now,’ someone says, and it’s him, talking to Rey. He can see his own face, concerned, close to her. It has to be him. It looks so much like him, except he’s -

There’s a jarring feeling. Rey’s pushing him out of her mind. He doesn’t resist it. He’s not sure how much of this he wants to see. 

‘Now you know what I know,’ she tells him. ‘That’s what you showed me. When you told me you were  Kylo Ren and I didn’t believe you.’

‘It could still be a trick,’ he says. ‘The person in that place, the old man you saw. He could be controlling all of this. That could have been him you were with, Rey. Things aren’t always what they seem.’

‘I don’t think it was like that,’ she tells him. ‘I don’t think that at all. The old man wasn’t the same as the person as Ben Solo.’ 

Still, she’s afraid of the idea. She understands the possibility of it. 

‘I don’t know why I’m so scared,’ she tells him. ‘It’s just a dream.’

‘You’re scared because it isn’t a dream. That place is real.’

She shudders, reflexively, like she’s suddenly cold.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I – Ben, I think something bad happens there. Or it’s already happened. Or it’s going to. The Force is confusing. I don’t know how to separate out time.’

He feels something strange, something very, very old. He thinks it might be empathy. 

‘I remember that,’ he tells her.  ‘From when I was young. It could be confusing.’

‘Does it get better?’

‘With training.’

He sees her doubt; there’s no one to train me, she’s thinking. Not like there was for you. I’m alone. I don’t have a temple. I don’t have an uncle. I don’t have a mother or a father or any of it.

‘I can help you with that too,’ he tells her. ‘I’ll train you tomorrow. Just like I promised.’ 

She smiles. 

‘What time is it anyway? How long was I asleep?’

‘A few hours.’

‘Then I’m going back to sleep,’ she tells him. And then she hesitates. ‘Thanks for coming.’

He doesn’t  answer that. He doesn’t even know why he did come. What does he care if she calls out in the night? He’s met thousands of people who’ve screamed for help, and he’s never answered any of them.

‘You should sleep too,’ she adds.

He doesn’t tell her that he finds it harder and harder to sleep these days. Some nights, he doesn’t even try.

  
+

When he trains with her for the first time, he understands something new. He understands what it must have been like to be Luke.

He’s trained people. The Knights, for one. Other soldiers. Younger kids at temple, to a point. They were all  _ fine,  _ but all he was doing was a professional service in his own benefit. Their being able to stay alive was convenient for him, so he taught them what they needed to know to stay alive, or because Luke had made him do it, back when that was an important thing he cared about. He’d never enjoyed it. 

With Rey, it’s different. She’s better than those people. She can remind  _ him _ of things he’s forgotten. She asks him things, and he’s not sure about the answer. It’s interesting. And she’s so strong. It all comes so naturally to her. He doesn’t have to hold back. He’s probably not going to break her spine or destroy her mind. 

Oddly, if he trains with her, he feels stronger. It is as if their power is connected, although he doesn’t understand that. There’s something between them that is outside of the normal range of what he knows.

She’d be an amazing Jedi, if Jedi still existed. Had he not killed them all. Were Luke to get his hands on her, figuratively speaking, she could probably rule the galaxy with the things she’d learn how to do.

He prefers not to mention that to her. 

Instead, he lifts her, so she’s floating. It’s a stupid trick, but she seems to enjoy it. She grins appreciatively, stretching out her feet, her arms. He can hold her up like this forever. She pirouettes, spinning. 

‘What happens if I jump?’ she asks.

‘No idea.’

She does it, of course. What happens is a sort of somersault, apparently but not much of a jump. She laughs.

‘Fun,’ she says. She does it again, somersaulting around. 

He feels something, but he’s not sure what it is.

She tests it again, making the same strange jumping movement. ‘Although possibly not the quickest way to get from A to B.’

She moves forward as if she’s treading water, which seems to have some greater impact on her going forward. 

He propels her, just slightly, with a move of his hand. Unfortunately, it’s more than he’d expected, and she goes forward so far and so fast that -

He pulls her back, quickly, setting her to her feet.

‘Sorry,’ he tells her. 

She laughs, unbothered. ‘You know the word, then.’

‘I learned it when I was young.’

‘’I’m sure.’ She grins. ‘I suppose it’s totally out of the question for me to float you?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Really though?’ She’s buoyant, happy. ‘Not even just a tiny, tiny bit? A  millimetre off the ground?’

He shakes his head.

‘Spoilsport.’

This time isn’t real, he thinks, as he watches her trying to lift something into the air, just like a new kid their first week with Luke, so  long ago. 

The two of them are just lost in this strange non-time while they crawl slowly back to civilisation. Nothing that happens here has any bearing on his real life or hers. Probably at some point they'll kill each other, or try anyway. That seems to be the inevitable trajectory for them.

Not now, though. For now, this is what it is.

‘Are you going to show me that Form, thing?’ she asks. ‘The one from yesterday morning.’ 

_ No _ , should be the answer. No, because the Jedi are extinct and pointless and their pretentious stupid training rituals are a waste of time. They're nothing except bullshit and sanctimony and he has nothing to do with any of that.

‘Yes,’ he says, and she smiles.

+

Time drags on. He’s used to long periods of boredom, but even at the Temple there was more to do than this. It’s difficult to fill the hours. They can’t train all day, and he’s not used to being around people for long periods anyway. 

He moves around the ship, trains alone, reads things, attempts to fix the comms system that he knows is unfixable, and becomes frustrated by the whole fucking thing. He has no idea what she’s doing. She keeps her distance, whatever it is. He can sense the Force ebbing in and out, so she must be practising things.

For his part, he wonders if his ship was traced. Probably. If so, how long until the First Order send someone, or something, out here to pick him up? No one can live off the grid forever, and especially not him. 

What will happen to her when they do come? Snoke is there in his mind, distant. He can sense her power. He knows there’s been an awakening. You’d have to be blind to miss it. 

Probably he’ll have to take the girl to Snoke, as was the original plan. Without her saber, just as she is now. Probably Snoke will kill her then. Or he’ll have him kill her, to prove his loyalty. Will she look at him with those fierce, trusting eyes as he does it? And what will he feel when she does? 

His thoughts are dangerous. They cut like knives.

+

‘How long have you been dreaming about that place for?’ she asks him.

She’s lounging on the seat, while he looks out, although not specifically at anything. Just space. The stars, the dead planets and hunks of space dust. He’s s not thinking about that place, the city of ash. The fact that she dreams about it too worries him. It makes it much more likely that it’s real.

He turns to her. 

‘A while. Not regularly.’

‘Where do you think it is?’

‘Fuck knows.’

She sighs. ‘And any guesses as to  _ what  _ it is?’

‘Sith,’ he says, not elaborating, although she apparently knows the word, because she just grimaces.

‘I got that much, thanks.’

She stands up, stretching. 

‘Ben,’ she says, and there’s an edge in her voice, so he suspects he can guess what’s coming: the tearful request to turn back to the Light, etcetera. He waits, looking at her.

‘I really need that saber.’

'Yes,’ he says, surprised. ‘You do.’

‘And if I go there,’ she adds, ‘I need to know how to use it.’

Not what he was expecting, but he can respect it. He just nods, and as he looks at her, the way she smiles back – determined, calm, courageous – he finds it hard not to once again think that she’s the best Jedi Luke never found. 

+

She dreams again, and this time, he’s there too. The two of them are walking in that evil place, and he’s softer in dreams, something less like  Kylo Ren. He’s more human, and instinctively, she takes his hand. He doesn’t seem to mind.

‘This is an awful place,’ she says, and he doesn’t disagree.

‘It was definitely built by Sith,’ he tells her, looking around. ‘I can read the runes.’

‘What do they say?’

‘Death shall not conquer,’ he reads. ‘Death shall not vanquish. Death shall not take the victory.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

They look at them. Rey shivers.

‘It’s not really cold,’ he tells her. ‘It’s just the way it feels.’

‘I hate it here, Ben,’ she tells him. 

She keeps walking forward, although she doesn’t know where they’re going.

‘How can live in this world?’ she asks, looking around. ‘Doesn’t it make you sick?’

‘Only at first.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘It stops mattering.’

‘Liar,’ she says, but there’s no heat in her voice. ‘It’ll never stop mattering.’

He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t draw away from her either.

‘How can you live like this?’ she asks again. 

‘I just do.’

Together they walk onwards, through the dust of this ruined world. And there, again, is that voice.

_ Rey _ , it says.  _ And you, the last Skywalker. You’re both before your time. _

'That’s not my name,’  Kylo Ren says, calmly, looking around him. ‘But I’d like to know yours.’

_ You already know it _ .  _ You knew it in your infancy, before you made up a different name. _

‘Tell me.’

He’s using his power, trying to push, to force the answer.

_ Arrogance _ , the voice says, and suddenly then there he is, his  full face looming over them. Those same dead eyes, dead skin. Parched, desiccated, dead, undying. 

_ It’s not your time yet _ , he tells them, surveying _. I’m not ready for you two. _

_ ‘ _ People can die any time,’ Ren tells him, dismissively. ‘Whether they’re ready or not is nothing to me.’

He throws a Force punch, or Rey thinks that’s what he does. She tries to help him, although she doesn’t understand what she has to do. Air gathers around her, thick and cloying, like she’s restrained. 

Then there’s a horrible laugh, broken and unkind. The roar of wind, violent, all-conquering. She can’t hold on, and neither can he. She’s falling, being swept away into nothing. Her head echoes with the voice.

_ When I’m ready _ , he says.  _ I’ll find you.  _

As her body falls and withers, her head hits stone with a resounding thud. She wakes up. She’s in the main compartment,  curled on the chair. She can sense Ben now, and she doesn’t think he’s asleep.

How does she know that? Every minute she’s here, it’s easier to sense him. They’re becoming connected in a way that she doesn’t understand. 

She moves towards where he is. Her knock at the door is hardly finished before he opens it up, staring at her, his eyes rimmed with tiredness and anxiety. He doesn’t look much like a warlord now. 

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘You dreamed it too? That was you?’

He nods.

She steps into his room and sits down on the bed, which is unmade. He moves to join her and she can’t help but notice that he’s not dressed like  Kylo Ren. He’s just in a t-shirt and soft sleeping trousers: the sort of thing anyone might wear to bed.

He is strangely vulnerable like this and, instinctively, she moves to rest her head on him, as she had with the other Ben. He responds in the same way. He lets her, pulling her close to him. He doesn’t seem to care much about being  Kylo Ren.

‘Do you know who that was?’ she asks him.  ‘That man.’

‘I think so. I think that was Emperor Palpatine.’

‘Who?’

He explains, the words hesitant at first, and then, progressively, more like he means them; more like they belong to him.  His grandfather and grandmother; Luke and Leia. The fall. Sidious. Rey stays close to him. His body is warm and reassuringly alive. Although nothing is normal, at least that is.

‘It doesn’t seem likely,’ Ren says. ‘But I don’t see who else it could have been.’

‘You’ve never seen his face?  On a  holo or anything?’

He shakes his head.

‘My parents wouldn’t have shown me something like that.’

_ My parents _ , Rey thinks.  Funny possessive for a person who claims to not have any parents. He doesn’t appear to have noticed the slip himself. 

‘What do you suppose he wants?’

‘Same as they all want.  Power.’

‘They?’

‘ Sith . It’s always about power. There’s nothing else that matters.’

‘And for Jedi?’

‘Oh, there’s something else for them.’ 

‘Which is?’

She notices that his arm around her is very tight.

‘Helping people,’ he says. ‘ So they say.’

\+ 

They don’t go back to sleep. It seems pointless to try, although neither of them is in the slightest bit well-rested and it’s not really the start of a new day. 

He dresses in his customary  Kylo Ren outfit, and she wears the same thing from the day before. She doesn’t have anything else. Together they sit in the cockpit, watching the vastness of space. There’s nothing interesting to see. They’re in the middle of nowhere, and far from home or  anything that looks like home.

At some point, Ren turns to her, slightly gruff-voiced.

‘If you dream it again,’ he tells her, ‘you should probably ask him who he is. It’s by far the easiest way of finding out.’

She doesn’t want to, but she can hardly disagree.

‘Perhaps we’ll be together. We can ask him together.’

‘I don’t always sleep,’ he tells her, casual. ‘ So you shouldn’t depend on that. And I think he sees you very differently to how he sees me, although I don’t know why he would.’

‘Perhaps you’re more of a threat.’

‘It’s not that. I don’t sense fear. I can’t place what it is.’

‘Surely he should want you to be there,’ Rey says. ‘That’s what I don’t understand. Aren’t you on the same side in a way?’

Something flashes across Ren’s face, cold and angry.

‘No,’ he says, sharp. ‘We’re not on the same side at all. I’m not on anyone’s side.’

‘Except your own?’

‘Except my own,’ he agrees, coldly. 

‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ she says, although it’s ridiculous that he would be offended. ‘I’m not clear on the whole...  Sith dynamics. Or anything else. I don’t understand if they used to be Jedi and stopped, or if they were always different. I don’t know anything about this stuff.’

She doesn’t add that she can guess some of it. She has to seem to be guileless.

‘A mix,’ Ren tells her. ‘Some are born, some become that way later.’

‘And you?’

‘I don’t want to be either. I hate it all equally.’ 

‘Ah,’ she says, thinking that he’s lying to himself and to her. ‘Still. Is it okay with you if I think that guy, Palpatine, is probably enemy number one right now?’

He pulls a face, a grimace of disapproval. 

‘He might have things to offer. Power, for one. It’s not always as clear as people like you think it is.’

_ People like you.  _ It stings her. So here they are, on their two sides. As clear as that: there are his people and there are her people. She doesn’t accept it.

‘He threw us off a cliff,’ she says. ‘I don’t think he’s got that much to offer. And why would he call you a Skywalker? That’s never been your name, has it?’

He shakes his head.

‘No, but he didn’t mean it like that. He means that my bloodline carries my grandfather’s blood. It’s not about Luke.’

‘Even if that’s true, if Luke’s still alive, in what sense could you be the last?’

He ghosts what might almost be a smile.

‘He’s assuming that based on his reading of the future. He doesn’t think Luke or I are likely to have children. Which is true, as it goes.’

Does he want children, then? There’s something in this comment that she can’t quite read. Some sadness or bitterness there. Perhaps it’s just talking about his lineage that’s the problem. 

‘Ben told me that people just read the future however they want it to be,’ she says. ‘That it’s mostly a load of kriffshit.’

He looks at her then. 

‘That wasn’t Ben Solo,’ he says, and his voice is surprisingly patient although there’s still doubt in it. ‘I don’t know who that was, Rey, but you shouldn’t trust him.’

She shakes her head.

‘I do trust him. It wasn’t like you think, not at all. He was a good person.’

‘I could never be a good person,’ he says, like it’s nothing at all to say this. ‘It’s too late.’

_ Enough _ , she thinks. She stands up, stretching, aching with tiredness and stress, not just from the dreams but from all of this. 

‘That’s up to you,’ she tells him. ‘I disagree with you, and that’s my choice, just like the way you live is your choice.’

He shrugs. 

‘You’re naïve.’

‘And you’re afraid. You’re afraid of that man, that you’re not strong enough to defeat him. And you know that he’s not on your side, whatever you say. He murdered your family, and you see when you look at him. You think I don’t know that?’

Her voice is resonant, and she’s aware that she’s angry. But  Kylo Ren doesn’t respond to it. He just looks at her, and there’s a coolness in his eyes.

‘Chances are that I’ll murder my family too,’ he tells her. ‘That matters less than you think’

There’s no good answer to this, at least not that she can see. Tearfully begging him not to do it, to see sense, to consider what he’s saying? He’s beyond all of  that, and it won’t reach him. She understands that, at least. 

‘I hope you don’t,’ is all she says, and then, with effort, she walks away from him, to take yet another shower. There’s only so much she can bear.

+

His state of mind isn’t great. It’s being away from the routine of the First Order too long, and Snoke for that matter, who is for the most part not in his head (and silently he adds that the reason for that is that he’s keeping him more distant than might be advisable). When he closes his eyes, he’s seeing Luke more clearly all the time. That white, bright light in the distance is growing stronger.

If he doesn’t murder someone soon, he thinks rather ironically, he’ll be in serious danger of being able to talk to his uncle again. 

The girl is right, in a way. He's afraid of the dream, and what it signifies. She only sees a part of it. He can see more, being more experienced with the Force. He can understand that what he’s seeing is an almost certain future, because it’s tied into the  guy she thinks was Ben Solo, and whom he’s forced to admit might actually have been...

The thought is complicated and frustrating. If that was Ben Solo, then at some point, he becomes him. He leaves all this behind.

The real future leaves traces. It has a different colour to imagined possibilities, and he knows that. Luke taught him so long ago how to read these things, and what he sees is that at some point in the future, this guy throws him off a cliff. That happens. At some point, Rey is there with this guy, on that  Sith planet. That happens too.

Someone with memories of the future has been inside her head. It’s confusing, and he doesn’t understand it, but that’s the explanation he’s found for it. It could be a trick, but if it is, it’s a good one. 

Everything is extremely unsettling, and he has no idea what to do about it. There are other things he thinks he sees in the memories inside of her head. His father’s face as he falls, for one. He’s looking right at him. 

+

As she trains, stretching into an almost perfect Jedi form, she seems cheerful. They put her in a good, relaxed mood. For him too, there’s something nice about it. It’s been so long since he practised with someone else. You aren’t supposed to be alone. It isn’t meant to be such a lonely life, all this power and control of the balance of the universe. You’re supposed to be a part of a group of people.

‘Good,’ he says, watching her, and she grins.

‘Well, you always said it’d be easy.’

He doesn’t have to think about it much now. He throws her his  saber , and she catches it with what seems like a practised hand.

It doesn’t look right, the blood-red sword in her hand. It’s clear that it doesn’t belong to her. But she uses it just the same. He’ll be glad when she has her own. 

‘Close your eyes,’ he tells her and she does it.

He uses the Force to try to knock the  saber out of her hand. She holds on, gritting her teeth with the effort. His own effort intensifies. He doesn’t want to split the  saber in two, which is a risk if they actually do this, but still. He doesn’t like losing.

Her eyes open to look directly at him. Her look is a challenge.

‘ Sure you’re strong enough?’ she asks him, a smile in her voice. 

It flies out of her hand, to hover ominously in the space between them, balanced between the two centres of their power. He can’t move it and neither can she, but it’s not for want of trying. He hates not being able to do things straight away. Apparently, so does she.

‘What now?’ she asks, as the  saber continues to hover there, static, a victim of a competition that he suspects will never really be won.

‘Surrender,’ he suggests and she laughs out loud.

‘Does that usually work?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Try harder,’ she suggests, but he can still hear that smile. 

He daren’t risk it breaking apart, but -

With his other hand, he tries to knock her off-balance, just lightly, just to gain the advantage. She raises her eyebrows.

‘Honestly?’ she says, resisting. ‘That’s mean.’

He  _ is _ mean. Doesn’t she know that already? 

But then, with a bat of her own hand, he feels the same Force, pushing him, trying to unsteady his balance, which he ignores. He gives her a look of irritation and she grins.

‘Annoying, isn’t it?’

He really can’t help it. He smiles. 

+

It’s the morning of the fifth day of this nightmare, and they’ve gone almost no distance, she realises. Crawling is the right word. It’s agonisingly slow. 

At least this night she’s been spared the dreams. What she imagines in her sleep is her own: the  Jakku desert, the rolling sands and the burning sun. Memories of childhood, vague half-thoughts of a ship she has to scavenge, on which she carefully balances. Ben and  Kylo Ren are nowhere to be seen. They’re just dreams, both bizarre and normal.

The only difference is that once, just for a second, she sees the glimpse of another face. It's an older man, with a shaggy, untended beard. He has a quizzical look in his eye, an edge of sardonic humour like he’s scrutinising her and finding the whole thing rather amusing. He’s powerful and he’s sad. 

When she says hello to him, he doesn’t reply. He’s just looking at her, taking the measure of who she is. 

Who are you, she asks him, but he doesn’t answer. He just fades away, like he’s got whatever he needed from her. 

When she tells Ben about that, as they sit there eating breakfast (or what passes for breakfast) together, he raises his eyebrows. 

‘That’ll be Luke,’ he says, flatly. ‘He’s grown a really ugly beard.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since he became a recluse.’

Her face must express the question.

‘He tried to murder me,’ he tells her. ‘After which I destroyed his temple, after which he fled to somewhere to be miserable as shit.’

‘Nice family. Very normal.’

He smiles again, although it looks like he has to think about how to do it. He seems to be experimenting, in her opinion, with the concept of being human. It’s fine by her. She’d rather he smiled. She’d rather he was a human. 

Between them an uneasy peace has developed. It’s based on mutual need to survive, but it’s more than that. All the time, she can sense his doubts. He says he doesn’t believe it was Ben Solo that she met, but she knows that’s not quite true. Increasingly, he thinks it is what happened. 

She doesn’t say anything about it. He’ll talk to her in time. Of that, she’s quite certain.


	3. Chapter 3

She dreams, and in her dreams, there’s a woman with a kind, shrewd face and long grey hair, fastened up into an intricate plait. She, the woman, speaks to Rey and her voice is soft. They are standing on the edge of a river. Rey remembers her, but she can’t place the connection. There’s a shadow. She has met her, somewhere, somehow.

‘Who are you really?’ she asks.

‘My name’s Rey.’

‘And you can use the Force,’ the woman says. There’s no trace of surprise in her. She’s merely stating a fact.

‘That’s what Ben’s told me, yes. I didn’t know that was its name.’

The woman seems to be sad.

‘Ben?’ she repeats. ‘Yes.’

‘Ben Solo. He’s Han Solo’s son. The pilot from the war.’

‘Yes,’ the woman says, and her voice is crackling with a strange emotion. ‘I know who he is. Who they are.’

‘But who are you?’

‘No one,’ the woman says, and in the dream Rey can see through her, like she’s made of glass. The light flickers through her, reflecting onto the river beyond, diffracting and splitting into a thousand shimmering patterns.’

‘Everyone’s someone,’ Rey tells her. ‘You must be someone.’

‘Where is Ben now?’ the woman asks. She sounds worried.

‘I’m on a ship with him,’ Rey answers. ‘I’m with Kylo Ren. He has two names.’

‘He only has one,’ the woman corrects. ‘At any given time.’

Rey smiles.

‘He answers to both.’

Beyond them, the water flows, melodic and slow. It hums with life.

‘Does he?’ the woman asks, and she sounds thoughtful. ‘I didn’t know that. But he’s dangerous, Rey. He’s dangerous to you.’

‘Not as dangerous as Emperor Palpatine.’

Another shock, this time more violent. The woman’s face blanches.

‘He’s long dead.’

‘He’s in our dreams,’ Rey tells her. ‘Just like you are. He’s sleeping, but he isn’t dead.’

‘No,’ the woman says, and she begins to fade, disappearing into the water, which gathers around her, engulfing her. She doesn’t struggle, simply submerges, vanishing. Rey tries to reach out to her, to pull her back, but it’s too late.

She wakes up and she knows that was his mother, Leia. She’d met her before, after all.

+

He’s agitated. Things are shaping themselves into a much more complicated situation than he wanted. For starters, Rey is dreaming about his mother. He can sense it, and although he isn’t privy to their conversations, he knows that what he is feeling is the energy of his mother, that diamond-cut, careful power that she has, gathering around Rey as she sleeps. There’s nothing he can do about it. She, Rey, is connected to the Force now. Which means being connected to his family. To Ben Solo’s family.

Added to which, he himself is dreaming about Luke. In his dreams, Luke is still training with him, just as if nothing had happened. They’re still at the Temple, although Ben is older now. They talk to each other like they’re friends.

He’s had these dreams before. It’s a part of who he is, the confusion, the doubt about his path, but they’ve never been this vivid. He’s increasingly sure they’re not dreams at all, because in the last one, his uncle taught him something that he didn’t know.

‘You should have learned it before,’ Luke told him. ‘You would have done.’

It’s just a dream, so he answers as if he were Ben Solo.

‘I thought you’d already shown me everything.’

‘Not this.’

And Luke reaches out his hands, and Ben takes them. There’s an electric feeling, like a shock, or burning. Light crackles in his fingertips.

‘What the fuck’s that?’ he asks, and his uncle just smiles.

‘Power. And don’t swear.’

‘I’ve already got power.’

‘You’ll need more,’ Luke says, and he’s calm. ‘If you’re intending to fight Palpatine, that is. You’ll need a lot more.’

He wakes up and there’s still the taste of electricity on his skin.

+

‘Something’s happening,’ Rey says, without preamble, as they sit together, drifting, always drifting towards their destination. ‘In our dreams, I mean. This isn’t normal, is it?’

‘The Force often leads to strange dreams.’

She raises her eyebrows. ‘This strange?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Your family are in all of my dreams,’ she tells him. ‘And I don’t understand why.’

‘We’re connected.’

‘ _We_?’

‘All of you. Jedi. Sith. You’ll dream about each other unless you learn how to block it out.’

‘Like you do?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I feel like I’m going mad,’ she tells him. ‘Palpatine, Snoke, Luke, Leia. I haven’t even met any of them. The only person I’ve actually met who can use the Force is you. It’s driving me crazy.’

‘You should be grateful I killed the rest of them then,’ he says, darkly. ‘There used to be a lot more. Although they weren’t so noisy.’

‘I’m not grateful you killed people,’ she tells him. ‘Who were they? Did you know them in the real world, or only from your dreams?’

‘Both,’ he tells her. ‘Some were my family’s friends. Some were …names from books. Some were just people I sensed at random.’

She doesn’t want to talk about it, not really, but what else is there, out here in space, a thousand miles from anything, if not talking to each other?

‘Why?’ she asks, because what other question can there be.

He pauses, and she waits for the spiel. Sith, Dark Side, the end of it all, destiny, et cetera.

‘I don’t know,’ he says instead, and it sounds like he really doesn’t know. He sounds forlorn about it.

‘Maybe you don’t have to do it anymore.’

‘Oh, I do,’ he replies, and he sounds tired. ‘It’s too late to do anything else.’

She pauses.

‘Okay,’ she tells him, because there’s no point to it. He looks at her, surprised.

‘Okay?’ 

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not going to talk me out of it?’

She shakes her head. ‘Not if you’ve already decided to ignore me. I can’t stop you from killing people. But I’ve got to tell you Ben, I won’t be with you when you do it. I’ll be with your family.’

‘They’ll disappoint you.’

She stands up, stretching her body, purposeful. She feels the Force, crackling with energy and power. All the time now, she feels it. It’s everywhere, threaded through everything.

‘If they’re anything like you, then no, they won’t,’ she tells him. And then, graceful, she closes her eyes. Around her, everything is cast in shadow and light. There’s him at the centre of it, burning with darkness but still so very flecked with light.

  
+

They’ve been travelling for seven days now, and the routine of is both incredibly tedious and somehow, incredibly familiar.

In his head, Snoke is calling. He’s always trying to get to him. Increasingly, he’s bored with the attempts. They’re not particularly strong. He can block them like they’re nothing.

When he thinks about it, if he does, he tells himself that he’s blocking Snoke for the girl’s sake, not his own. She should have the freedom to choose her saber, at least, before she gets involved with all the rest of it. That seems only fair.

He likes her. You can call it whatever you want, but he sees that there’s an important aspect of all of this to consider, one that brings with its own complexities despite being an apparently simple fact. He just likes her.

+

After a particularly exhausting training session, in which she’s asked questions that he doesn’t know the answers to, questions about Palpatine particularly and how he fights and what he favours and what he’s known for, an unwelcome but unavoidable idea occurs to him.

For the first time in years, he thinks that it might be … not a bad idea to communicate with Skywalker. He’s fairly sure that he can, if he reaches out to him with the right kind of intent. And in this case, his intent is to discuss Emperor Palpatine, about whom he knows very little other than that he’s someone he’d like wiped off the face of the galaxy.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That’s what it’s about. That’s why he needs to contact Luke. In his dreams, Skywalker knew. He mentioned Palpatine by name.

So he tries, that morning as he’s meditating and Rey is reading over an engine manual she’s found, fuck knows why. He supposes she just wants to read something.

He has to grit his teeth to do it. It’s irritating to have to debase himself by contacting him, and he _knows_ that Snoke wouldn’t sanction it, but –

Well, anyway. Snoke’s not the point anymore. Snoke’s old news out here.

Instead, he closes his eyes, and he thinks about Luke, searching for him. He has to imagine him in a nice way, which isn’t the easiest of things. He’d looked up to him when he was a kid. He’d thought it was cool, the stuff he could do with the Force. Luke had been a second dad, really. Always there, looking out for him.

Not every single memory is bad.

 _We need to speak_ , he thinks to him, vaguely, irritably. _I know you can see us here. I know you’re there. This is about the Emperor._

There’s no answer, at least not that he can find. But he’s no stranger to the Force. Answers don’t always come the second you demand them. Sooner or later, now he’s activated the connection, his uncle will show up.

+

‘Is your mother a Jedi?’ Rey asks, as they finish training.

She’s worked hard, and she’s getting stronger every time they train. Her senses are whippet-fast and sharp as a knife. He’s teaching her more than he should, because it is irresistible to do so.

He loves the feel of it, the way it is to be with her, in the Force. The power it gives him, and her, and the ways in which they are connected. Her body, her strength. His own.

‘No. She didn’t finish training.’

She leans down, stretching her limbs out, agile, lithe. ‘Why’d she stop?’

‘No idea.’

‘You never asked?’

He snorts, not a laugh but something like one. ‘I asked. Leia doesn’t answer questions that don’t suit her.’

‘Odd,’ Rey says.

‘Yeah, well.’ He stretches too, relaxed, unusually so. ‘My mother can see the future. I suppose some things aren’t hers to tell.’

‘Can you see the future?’

‘Sometimes.’ He stands back up. ‘It’s more her thing. What does it matter?’

Rey shrugs.

‘She’s in my dreams. I just wondered.’

‘What does she say to you there?’

‘Not much.’ She thinks about it. ‘She asked me about you. She told me Kylo Ren was dangerous.’

His face flickers with what is so obviously unease.

‘She’s right about that.’

‘But mostly, I think she wants to know if you’re alive,’ Rey adds. ‘I mean, Ben. The other part of you.’

‘And what did you tell her?’

‘That he is.’

He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t correct her either. She has to take that as some kind of progress.

+

They dream that night, and they’re both there where Palpatine is, in that vast, echoing cavern. It’s where they met him, but this time, he is silent, sleeping, a malignant growth. All around them are strange forms. Dead sith, statues and honours to the fallen and gone.

No one is gone, though. Not in this way of living.

Rey shudders at the thought, because she can hear them in her head. So can he.

 _Power_ , they say. _We have it. You want it._

They whisper it, rising and falling and like a wave. Have, want, have, want. Their voices rasp out the sounds. Does he want it? At this cost?

He sees for certain then what he thinks he’s seen before. There, in a glass jar, his form crumpled up and like a puppet, is Snoke. He’s dormant, if he could be said to be alive at all, and Ben understands who he is really seeing there, and what it means. Rey doesn’t, of course. She’s never seen Snoke’s face.

_We have it. You want it. We have it. You want it._

The rhythm continues.

‘Not that much,’ he tells them, finally. ‘Maybe not that much.’

They’re on the ship now, floating, ghostly. Rey’s hand in his. This is Snoke’s ship. It’s what he’s seen before: a photograph of the future, something lingering in her mind, an image that she can’t escape. She hasn’t created the image. It’s come to be in her head some other way, and he doesn’t understand it.

He doesn’t want to be here. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened. He can feel the pain of it, the nights of grief and regret and doubt, and the burning loss and guilt. He knows it is his own guilt, and he doesn’t want this to be real.

‘Ben?’ Rey says, and she’s talking to him, but there’s another him: Kylo Ren, standing there, imposing in his mask. 

‘I don’t want to see,’ he tells her, but she doesn’t understand. She just looks at him.

The long walkway, the one at the heart of the ship, underneath which, that vast, endless fall. Metal, clanking, noises. And his father.

Han reaches out, to stroke his face. His eyes are very soft and kind.

The saber is as red as blood as he drives it straight through his father’s chest. 

Han is falling, so far, so very far.

‘No,’ Rey says, and there’s horror there in her and disgust and shame, even as she wakes up, and as he wakes up too, he thinks he might be sick.

She’s there at the door, of course she is, when he goes to open it.

‘Ben,’ Rey says, and he knows that she was in the dream. ‘Fuck, was that your -’ 

He moves towards her, and he puts his arms around her, although whether it’s for him or for her, she has no idea. She returns the gesture, holding him. He’s shaking. She strokes his back, because she doesn’t know what else to do. 

‘It’s all right,’ she tells him, her breath hot on his skin. ‘Don’t worry.’ 

He is worried. More than that. He’s shaking violently, shivering down his body. 

‘Ben,’ she says, and her voice is so soft. ‘It’s okay. It hasn’t happened.’ 

He reaches for her, pulling her still closer. He buries his head in her shoulder, clutching at her. She keeps on stroking his back, and then his hair, and his arms, careful, tender. She threads her fingers through his hair, liking the feel of it. She runs them through it again, curling the hairs between her hands. Her fingers move down to his neck, and she strokes there too. 

He’s not shaking as much anymore. 

She kisses his neck, just lightly, because she can. She misses kissing him. He was so good at it. It makes him shudder, but not in dread, she thinks. Certainly not that. She kisses him again, her hand snaking down his back, until her fingers are curling to touch his stomach, to stroke there too.

Another thing she’s missed. 

She moves him slightly, so she can see his face. He looks at her, and his eyes are so brown and open. She smiles at him as she moves her hand to stroke his face. He doesn’t smile back, but she’s not expecting that. He just stares, like she might hold the secrets to the universe. 

‘Ben,’ she says, gently, ‘it doesn’t have to happen. Dreams don’t have to be real.’

And then she kisses his lips with hers. He jolts with surprise, but he doesn’t pull away. She just keeps on kissing him until he kisses her back, and when he finally does, it’s energetic and teasing, playing with her, nibbling at her lips, kissing like he’s only just now remembering how this is done. 

\+ 

The list of things they don’t talk about is growing, she thinks, the morning after, as he completely ignores her, behaving as if he hadn’t just dreamed of murdering his own father and then come to her bed. He acts like their waking up together is nothing at all.

They don’t discuss his identity or hers. They never talk about Snoke. They never talk about his obvious doubts with his life.

They also don’t discuss the point some days ahead when they’ll arrive at the repair dock. There he’ll become the First Order leader again and she’ll be – whatever she is now. A Jedi-in-training, taught by a man who thinks he is a monster. 

Now they don’t discuss fucking either, apparently. They don’t discuss the way they fit together, so perfectly, the way that it feels. The liberation of it, to finally have done what was always completely inevitable.

At least there’s a time frame now. They’ve drifted far enough back that he’s been able to find a solution of sorts: in three days, they’ll arrive at what seems to be a planet with some kind of industry, enough that there’s a chance of getting the hyper-drive fixed and some of the secondary systems. He’ll be able to communicate with Snoke, so he says, although she doesn’t understand why he can’t do that now, if Snoke can use the Force.

Another matter that is off the table, apparently, because when she asked him that, he’d become closed and distant, and he’d given her a non-answer.

She supposes that means that he doesn’t _want_ to communicate with Snoke. That’s the only explanation that’s plausible.

She’s damn sure of something else too: he’s tried to communicate with his uncle, and Luke Skywalker was listening when he did. That strange figure, the bearded man, has reappeared in her thoughts more often, always at a distance and always watching.

She tells him this, as they’re there, watching the stars unfurl around them, slow-moving and unhurried, already dead but still so bright.

‘Yes,’ he says, calmly. ‘I suppose you would see Luke more.’

She waits.

‘I’m trying to reach him,’ he adds, tone rather brittle. ‘About Palpatine. I think he knows something.’

‘I didn’t think you spoke to him.’

‘I haven’t for six years. But the situation has changed.’

‘Okay. And has he spoken back?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. But he will.’

‘He watches me,’ she tells him. ‘In my thoughts. It’s like he’s… deciding on something. He looks at me.’

He sighs inwardly. It’s what he expected, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

‘Mind if I take your hand?’ he asks her, although she never minds when he does. ‘If he’s watching you, then…’

She offers her hand.

Together they close their eyes, because she’s already understood what he’s asking. They’re going to look for Luke together, with both greater power and greater urgency.

 _Mr. Skywalker?_ Rey asks, hesitantly, as she searches for him, which he finds entertaining in its way. As far as he can be entertained.

 _What?_ She asks him, because she can sense his amusement.

 _I don’t think you need to use his title._ He tries himself. _Are you there?_

There’s a strange feeling, a kind of sense of himself, as if he’s looking at his own face in a mirror, except it’s someone else on the other side. And then, he understands, because he opens his eyes, and sure enough, there in front of him, protected onto the ship, is the ghostly, insubstantial but nevertheless discernibly pissed off form of his uncle.

It’s not a good feeling, seeing him again. He’d be fine with running the bastard through with a lightsaber to avoid the sheer awkwardness of it. But –

He shakes Rey, for her to open her own eyes.

‘Hi,’ she says, seeing him. ‘You’re… Luke Skywalker?’

‘Yes,’ Luke says, and his voice is oddly different to how he remembers it being. He’s got older. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

‘Err – ‘ she steadies herself. ‘It’s about someone in our dreams. We think that -’

‘Not you,’ Luke says, rudely. ‘No offense, but you’re not the person I’m most concerned about in this room at this exact moment. Kylo Ren, isn’t it?’

And he turns to him, and it’s –

‘Yes,’ he says, and he’s aware of how angry he is. He could possibly split the ship in half, he’s so furious. ‘That’s my name.’

Luke glares. ‘Well?’

‘Emperor Palpatine appears to be alive,’ he tells him, through gritted teeth. ‘And in my… dream, you seemed to know that. Did you?’

Luke stares at him.

‘No, I didn’t.’ His face blanches. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Fairly sure. Although I haven’t ever seen his face, I think it has to be him.’

‘And?’

‘And?’ he repeats.

‘Yeah, and, so what?’ Luke’s tone is contemptuous. ‘You decide to communicate with me using the Force. You bring this girl along for the ride. All in order to tell me that someone who, as far as I can see, would be on your side, is alive. Forgive me if I’m not exactly interested.’

‘It’s more than that,’ Rey says, interjecting.

‘How is it more than that?’

‘It’s …’ She trails off, clearly torn between not wanting to share his secrets and not wanting to lose the connection to Luke.

‘He kills both of us,’ he says, taking a deep breath. ‘It was a certain future that I saw. At some point, he’s going to wake up, and eventually – somehow – both of us are going to die because of him.’

Luke just stares.

‘I’m pretty baffled, Ben, I’ve gotta tell you,’ he says, and he does sound baffled. ‘Why the fuck do you think I would care about that?’

There’s a horrible, loaded pause. Rey looks embarrassed, and he feels –

Yeah, well. He feels _something_.

‘Because she’s a Jedi, or she will be, and she’s – better than me. In training, I mean.’

‘No one’s better than you were.’

‘She is.’

Luke looks at her, and back to him.

‘Rey,’ he says, although no one’s told him her name. ‘Could you give me a minute alone with my – with him?’

She nods, relieved, and although he can’t blame her for wanting out of this, he misses her the moment she’s gone.

‘So,’ Luke says, shortly. ‘Talk.’

He does. He manages, without destroying anything, to convey the basics of the situation. She turned up on Jakku with knowledge of the future, delivered by what appears to have been a future version of him. This included prior knowledge of Palpatine, as well as some … other things.

‘Other things?’ Luke asks. ‘Like what, exactly?’

‘I kill Han Solo,’ he tells him, and he suspects his voice isn’t steady. ‘In the somewhat near future.’

There’s a sharp, awful moment.

‘Do you?’ Luke asks him. ‘Is that something you’re planning to do?’

‘It’s something Snoke has suggested as a possibility.’

Luke looks at him.

‘And you don’t like the idea much, I see. Interesting. I didn’t think you had those sorts of feelings left.’

He knows. He does know, of course he does. He has to –

‘Yes,’ he says, and the word costs him something. ‘I –‘

His uncle waits.

It’s a battle that he overcomes with intense effort. ‘I don’t like the idea much.’

That’s as much as he’s got to give, and maybe Luke knows that, because he appears to fractionally soften.

‘I care if you live or die,’ he says, abruptly. ‘Just for the record, that wasn’t a fair comment. I do give a fuck about it.’ And then he unbends even further, looking much more like the man he used to be.

‘I’ll help you,’ he says. ‘With Palpatine. I can sense something, you’re right about that. And I can sense her too, and there’s more than you think to that story. But Ben, if I’m helping you, I expect -’

He doesn’t need to go further.

‘I know,’ he interjects. ‘I can’t kill anyone. Or do the things you don’t like.’

‘Practically every single thing you’re doing is something I don’t like,’ Luke says, dryly. ‘So I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘We play chess,’ he says, trying to lighten the mood, although he doesn’t know why. ‘So I do at least one thing you like.’

There’s an odd pause. 

‘A sense of humour,’ Luke says. His voice is very measured. ‘Interesting. I’ll see what I can find out.’

They leave it there.

And when Rey comes back into the room, from where she’s plainly been nervously hovering outside, he finds that he wants – more than that, he _needs_ – to touch her. Perhaps she knows this, because she walks towards to him like she can read his mind. 

+

After he’s talked to Luke Skywalker, at least there’s no pretence that they’re not sleeping together. He plainly can’t bear what he’s feeling, because when she comes into the room, he’s all but begging, her to touch him, to be near to him. He looks drained, as if he’s been through a gruelling fight. He looks at her like she’s water in the desert.

She wonders if he knows that he’s crying. A part of her thinks that he must be aware of it, but another wonders if he’s so detached that he can no longer remember things like that and what they feel like. Does it just happen, some strange, alien bodily sensation that he can’t name or experience? 

She doesn’t mind, in the end, about that. Touching him is what she wants. She can give him this.

+

The hours move on, slow, and infinite in their emptiness. She is thinking about the station they will come to, where they will repair this ship and where this strange time will end. They’re lying together, on the bed, not bothering to do anything at all except be together. Action seems increasingly pointless. All there is now is waiting.

Waiting for Skywalker. Waiting for Snoke. Waiting for the end and beginning of something.

‘Do you have… money?’ she asks him and he turns to her, curious.

‘Money?’

‘For the repairs. I mean, how do you plan to… pay?’

He does that thing where he might be smiling, but only just.

‘I don’t usually pay for things.’

‘You knock someone unconscious and take them?’

‘Yeah. Pretty much.’

She shrugs, doubtful.

‘The Force will fix all that,’ he tells her, indifferent. ‘Things like that just happen.’

‘Have you ever not had anything you needed?’ she asks him, and she tries not to put resentment in her tone, although she isn’t sure it works.

‘Not really.’

‘Ben,’ she says, and there’s worry there, because she is worried, not about the repairs but about all of it. ‘What’ll happen afterwards? When you talk to Snoke.’

‘I can’t say for sure.’

‘But if –‘ she hesitates, nervous. ‘You’re intending to go back to his ship?’

‘Why don’t you ask what you really want to ask?’

She steadies herself. ‘Okay. Are you Kylo Ren?’

It takes him so long to answer that she thinks he isn’t going to. There’s that thick, cloying air of tension again, like he might smash something apart.

‘Not when it comes to Palpatine, no. I don’t think so.’

‘So who are you then?’

‘A Skywalker,’ he tells her. ‘But don’t read anything into that.’

‘It’s hard not to.’

He strokes her hair, and he’s so soft and loving, and it’s impossible to believe that he could be anyone except Ben.

‘This isn’t real, Rey,’ he says. ‘This time with you is the anomaly, not Kylo Ren. Once this is dealt with, I’ll go back to what I have to do.’

‘Killing people.’

‘Fulfilling my destiny.’

‘It’s wrong,’ she tells him, fiercely. ‘That destiny is wrong. How can you want to kill your – your own father. And Luke, and -’

‘I don’t want to.’ He sighs. ‘I don’t hate them. But we’re on opposite sides and it’s a war. Some things are inevitable.’

She takes his hand in hers, stroking it, tracing the lines of his fingers.

‘Are you going to kill me too? Is that where this madness leads?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I –‘

‘You have to be stronger than this,’ she tells him. ‘You have to find a way.’

He only sighs.

‘There isn’t one.’

And then, he turns over, signalling the end the conversation. Although he’s very still, she doesn’t think he sleeps for a long time.

In her dreams, everything coalesces. Luke and Leia walk with her, nearby that same river, the water lapping soft and slow. Luke is cheerful, laughing at something his sister tells him. They seem all so serene now, but over the horizon, a wind is coming, a dry desert storm.

‘Snoke,’ Luke says, looking at it, dispassionate. ‘Or Palpatine, or both, since I’m starting to think they’re the same thing. And where is Ben?’

‘He can’t sleep,’ Rey answers. ‘He’s lying awake next to me.’

Leia shakes her head.

‘He should be here. He needs to see this. To understand.’

‘He does understand.’

‘Not enough,’ Luke says. ‘What we have is good. But I’m worried that it’s not enough.’

Leia’s tone is bleak. ‘It’ll have to be.’

It is Rey’s voice that ends the dream, her certainty shaping the landscape into a new, brighter form. As she speaks, she thinks that Ben can hear her anyway, although he isn’t here.

‘It will be.’

+

Luke turns up again, when he’s least expected. He’s practising a form, something he’s known for what feels like his whole life, when a voice behind him makes him jump.

‘Still perfect, I see,’ Luke says. ‘The form, at least. If not necessarily the sentiment behind it.’

He turns to him.

‘The sentiment doesn’t have to matter.’

His uncle’s face answers that comment without a word.

‘She’s his granddaughter,’ Luke tells him, without preamble. ‘Did you know that already?’

He stops, stunned.

‘No. What?’

‘Try to sense it. You’ll see.’

‘And there’s something else,’ Luke adds. His tone expresses contempt. ‘Snoke. Your friend.’

‘He’s not real. He’s something manufactured by Palpatine. I know.’

‘And what are your thoughts on that?’

‘If Palpatine dies, he’ll die too. He’s a puppet. I don’t think he can live without him.’

‘Not those kind of thoughts, Ben.’ Luke is apparently gritting his teeth with frustration, which makes two of them. ‘Thoughts about –‘

But then he breaks off.

‘There’s no point,’ he says, ending his sentence mid-way. ‘Fine. Yes, they will both die. Convenient for you, since your next step would be to assume the throne. Are you going to tell her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine,’ Luke says again, although absolutely nothing is fine. He moves to disappear, his energy unfastening, connecting away, but he holds him back for another moment.

‘How am I meant to tell her that?’ he asks. ‘She’s so –‘

‘Figure it out,’ Luke tells him. ‘You used to be empathetic. I’m sure you’ve still got it somewhere, buried underneath all the shit.’

With which, he does disappear.

+

When he approaches her, she can sense immediately that something is wrong. It’s not just the feeling she has, that strange knotted tension in her stomach that suggests discomfort, but also the way he looks, his eyes more distant. The light in him seems further away.

‘What is it?’ she asks. There’s no need for ceremony any more, for the pretence that they can’t read each other’s thoughts.

‘I talked to Luke.’

‘And?’

‘Palpatine is your grandfather.’

The words fall like stones and she doesn’t understand.

‘Luke doesn’t lie,’ he adds, but she hardly hears him because the wonder of it is too great and too unfathomable. ‘He sensed it, and now I can sense it too. That’s where you come from. The thing you’ve been wondering your whole life, Rey.’

Grandfather. The word is a strange one to apply. She knows it only for other people. But –

‘That can’t be right,’ she says, and it can’t, because that mustn’t ever be the answer. Anything but that. Her parents were heroes. Good people.

And yet…

‘Like mine,’ he says, and his voice wavers, ‘your grandfather was a very powerful and very dangerous Sith.’

‘He wasn’t. You’re lying.’

‘I don’t lie to you,’ he tells her, and she can’t help herself from laughing bitterly, the shock of it running through her, the rage and doubt.

‘You lie all the time. About who you are. About what you’re thinking and feeling. You lie to yourself continually.’

‘You choose to –‘

She interrupts him, and he understands her anger. She is furious and full of grief at the shock of an answer she’d thought for her whole life that she wanted, and now it has come and it is tainted.

‘I’m not choosing to see it, Ben,’ she says, and she spits out his name. ‘It’s just there. You are a liar. You’re pretending with your whole fucking life.’

Bristling between them are the things he doesn’t want to talk about, explosive, toxic, at risk of breaking it all apart.

‘I’m not pretending anything,’ he says, calmly. ‘You know who I am. I’m a murderer. I work for the First Order. I serve Snoke. When have I ever said anything else?’

‘You say it all the time. You say it when you’re there with Luke, and when you’re there with me, and in our dreams, and when you’re – when you’re just here. Like this. You’re saying it all the time.’

‘It’s too late,’ he says. ‘Don’t you understand that?’

‘It _isn’t_ ,’ she spits. ‘You’re just afraid.’

‘I’m not afraid of anything.’

And then, almost without him knowing it, the saber is in his hand, flying towards his grasp, so ready, so willing to hurt her. The metal is cool on his fingers. So very easy, this. The cut of the blade to her throat. 

Wouldn’t it all be so very easy? He’s walking towards her now, the saber raised, and she’s staring at him like she doesn’t know who he is.

‘Ben,’ she says, and the anger in her is gone. It’s only fear now. An animal, cornered. She raises her hand, summoning the Force, but her energy’s fractured, splintered by shock and terror and pain, and if he wanted to it’d be the easiest thing.

He’s so close he can almost feel her breath on his skin.

The saber burns the air, as he moves it. A cauterising blade, lethal in his hands.

She’s crying. He observes it dispassionately, and he understands it. She knows what he has told her is true. She has the family she has always wanted.

Empathy, Luke had said. He has that in spades when it comes to her. He can read her thoughts well enough. Every feeling she has is obvious to him. It’s only what you do with your empathy that matters: to heal, to control, to oppress, to save. You can do whatever you like with it, and lately he’s chosen the less complicated of the options available.

‘Don’t,’ she tells him, one of the hundreds of people who’ve said that word to him as they’ve looked in his eyes and thought he might be saved.

‘Ben,’ she says again. ‘You told me you’re a Skywalker. Not for always, but for this time, for this fight. You have to be one now.’

And then she holds out her hands to him, weaponless and defenceless.

‘Be one now,’ she says. ‘I need you.’

The saber’s in his hand, but he can’t. Of course he can’t. He has a sense of the future’s wildness, the shifting sands and eddies of its terrain, unmappable, unknowable. Not killing Han Solo. Not killing Rey. Not killing Luke.

Maybe killing Palpatine and Snoke. Maybe.

Carefully, he lowers the saber. She’s shaking, but her eyes meet his.

‘Thank you,’ she tells him. ‘Thank you.’

+

They talk about it later, when he’s calmer and the dust has settled. She’s not calm, but she’s holding it together.

Grandfathers, he tells her, are complicated things.

‘My power comes from him,’ she says, and she sounds horribly sad about it. ‘That monster. It’s the – the best thing in my life, and it comes from him.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ he tells her. ‘It’s your power, not his. You can do what you want with it.

‘I want to be a Jedi,’ she says, and it’s as simple as that.

‘I don’t.’

‘I kind of got that,’ she says, half-smiling. ‘But I was wondering about it. If you were a Jedi, and yes, I know you’re not. How would you train me? Would it be different?’

He shrugs, but thinks about it just the same.

‘I guess it’d be quite different,’ he admits. ‘More… bullshit. Less fighting. There’s a lot of meditating and reflecting and talking about The Universe.’

‘Ah.’

‘And I’d teach you the words for things. There’s a lot of stupid words.’ He tries to smile again, just for the experience of it, although he doesn’t know quite why. ‘Sacred texts you’re supposed to read. Oh, and I’d have to open the forms properly.’

‘Properly?’

‘Ritualistic stuff,’ he says, although he doesn’t elaborate. ‘It’s all bullshit.’

‘Okay,’ she says, not sounding particularly keen on this, to his relief.

‘None of that really matters though,’ he adds, cautiously. ‘It’s … more about the sentiment.’

‘Helping people?’

‘Something like that. Not trying to hurt them, at least.’

‘Mm,’ she says. ‘So not being someone like my – grandfather. Basically. I don’t see him helping a lot of people.’

‘No,’ he agrees, although he’s more cautious now because he can sense the way the wind is blowing with this discussion. ‘I don’t think he did. I got the impression he killed a lot of people. Including my grandfather, actually.’

‘Was he ever a good person?’ The question burns with the force of her need to know the answer. ‘I mean, your grandfather used to be a good person, you said. Or something like one. And you –‘ She breaks off. ‘You used to be someone else too. But him?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he says, carefully, and her face falls. ‘Not like Anakin, no. He was a Jedi for a long time before he fell and eventually, he –‘ He takes a pause. ‘No. Palpatine isn’t like that.’

‘But you are,’ she says, and it’s a question she’s asking him, one that he has to answer.

‘Yes,’ he tells her, and her breath seems to catch. ‘I’m more like that.’

‘Good.’ Her eyes meet his, and there’s a thrill in it, a frisson of energy, of need. ‘Because when we meet him, when we kill him, that’s who you have to be.’

‘I will be,’ he says, and he means it. ‘I’ll be Ben Solo.’

‘Yes,’ she answers. ‘You will.’

+

They sleep together, her curled on her side next to him, and as he falls asleep, he knows that they’re going to dream of him. It seems inevitable. This is the end of something, and there, wherever he is, is part of that end and beginning. It’s just how it is. Palpatine isn’t calling to them, but he doesn’t need to, not if Ben’s intending to find him.

And sure enough, they appear there again, in that dark and forbidding place, her arm around him, and his hand in hers. The dust is so thick that it chokes, and as she walks with him, he makes the decision that he has to make. Like it’s nothing, he shrugs off his old life, and it falls as easily as a cloak slipping soft to the ground.

It was a stupid life anyway. He’s nothing like Palpatine. Nothing like Snoke. Or if he is, that’s not what he’s choosing today.

‘Rey,’ he says, and she turns to him, eyes bright. ‘He won’t win.’

She smiles, full of courage. ‘Probably not.’

Together, they walk further. Palpatine is nowhere to be seen in his caverns, but Ben’s equal to that. He pushes with the Force, and the ground shakes beneath them, tearing apart, fissures and ruptures in the grey stone, cracking, to reveal the earth below.

‘Wake up,’ he says, his voice echoing, resonant in the vast chamber. He grins at her, his voice returning to its normal volume. ‘I’m good at finding people.’

She raises her eyebrows.

‘You never showed me how to do that.’

‘Just a party trick,’ he tells her.

‘Some party.’

Bored of the wait, he smashes a few things to the floor. Glass breaks underfoot: a jar that contains another Snoke splinters and breaks. The Snoke, if that’s what you could call it, falls wetly to the ground in a horrible squelch.

‘Yuck,’ Rey says, observing this. ‘What’s that?’

‘Clone,’ he says, shrugging. ‘Not really alive. But possibly valuable.’

And then, there’s the voice, above them and far away.

 _Valuable indeed_.

Rey tenses, next to him.

_I didn’t call for you. It’s not your time._

‘We didn’t feel like waiting.’

It’d be good to have a saber, one that isn’t red and splitting apart under the weight of its own instability, he thinks. Perhaps he can get one made, when Rey does. Or Luke might –

‘Ben,’ Rey says, next to him, in a small, quiet voice, and he sees that Palpatine is descending to them, floating down, ghostly and malignant. His body seems larger, and yet he is less powerful now.

He snorts.

‘Floating,’ he says. ‘Boring.’

He extends his hand to Rey, and she takes it without question. He lifts them both, so they are rising to meet him as he falls. Their eyes meet his, and Palpatine is angry, contemptuous and afraid. He is all the things that this life makes you become.

‘You’re my grandfather,’ Rey tells him, and the words burst out of her like spitfire. ‘I know that.’

‘Ah,’ he says, slowly, carefully. His voice softens to honey. ‘And, yes, I see that for all your anger and doubt, is it not also true that for all your life you’ve want-‘

She’s listening, and in her eyes is a tiny spark that he doesn’t think he wants to see develop.

‘No,’ he says, interrupting in his normal voice and she starts, like she’s woken up. ‘I don’t think so. You murdered her parents.’

Palpatine’s eyes flash with fury.

‘So,’ he says, and he’s laughing, unkind, full of maliciousness and hatred, but it’s his true voice and she can see that. ‘You’ve chosen the weaker part of your bloodline, I see.’

Next to him, Rey flares with temper, but it doesn’t bother him. He’s lived around this stuff for years. Stupid nasty comments, poking at people, goading, all full of bile and desperation. What does it really matter? Like his dad used to say, if all you’ve got is being mean, well bad news, because I’ve got a blaster. The thought almost makes him laugh. He misses Han.

‘I chose the part I liked most,’ he tells him. ‘And the part that I thought would be best suited to killing you.’

‘Weak,’ Palpatine says. ‘The last Skywalker, and so very weak.’

‘Mmh,’ Ben says, unbothered. ‘Lots of talking. Not a lot of demonstration.’

He feels quite clear about it now. This guys is really, truly, a huge fucking hassle.

‘You should have stayed asleep,’ he tells him.

And he takes Rey’s hand, lifting it, and uses all of it. Their connection, the energy that flows between them, and more besides. His family. The things that made him, and her, and that bind them together, beyond any one small life.

Palpatine dies like nothing but dust and stone, and in his ashes, Rey smiles.

‘This is a much better dream’ she says.

He kisses her. Why not, after all?

‘I’m sure it’ll be harder in real life. This is just a memory really.’

‘Yes.’ She shakes her head. ‘It feels so real.’

‘It’s real. It just hasn’t happened yet.’

‘You okay?’ she asks, even as he’s floating them down, back to the solid earth.

‘Definitely.’

The feet land on the stone.

‘Can I start calling you Ben?’

He smiles. ‘You never called me anything else.’

‘Well, you were a hard guy to get out of my mind.’

He smiles again, because she likes it when he does, and he doesn’t mind all that much. The worst thing’s happened now. He changed his mind and forsaken his destiny, et cetera. To say how long he’d put it off, the ridiculous thing is that it’s not even that big of a deal.

+

The next day is the last that they will have together before they reach the station. It won’t be more than 20 hours now.

They train together, as they do in the mornings, and there’s nothing much more he needs to teach her. She’ll have to go to Luke for the rest. For the Jedi stuff, that is, which he could teach but which he doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t believe it in enough, or not in the right way. He tells her that, and she grins.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘And what will you be doing? While I’m learning mystical bullshit with Luke?’

‘Something else.’

‘Ah,’ she laughs. ‘Something else. Like what?’

He smiles.

‘Whatever I like.’

Later, he and Rey play chess and he shows her the ways in which Han Solo cheats, and how he always wins. She laughs and in the end, it does seem pretty funny.

‘I hope I meet him one day,’ she says, even as she’s losing. ‘He sounds like a great guy.’

‘Sometimes,’ he concedes. ‘I don’t know what he’s like now.’

‘Probably kind of the same as before.’ She moves across, to sit on his lap, her arms around him. ‘I’m sure he’s not going to have changed that much.’

‘Maybe.’

She runs her hand through his hair, as she likes to do. Kisses his neck, just softly.

‘Don’t worry,’ she tells him, gently. ‘Can’t you sense it? Can’t you feel how happy everyone is that you’re coming home?’

He can. The way that they feel is almost unbelievable. He’s fairly sure he caught the sound of Luke singing, tuneless and horrible, out in the wilds of wherever he is.

He didn’t know his uncle could sing.

‘I can sense it,’ he says. He kisses her.

+

On that last night aboard the ship, they dream together, just like you’d expect. Ben sleeps next to her, curled around her, and in his dreams, she walks with him wherever he has to go.

He’s expecting it, but of course, his family are there. His mother first, distant and strange. She smiles when he sees her, and he manages something like a smile in return, but mostly because Rey is there and it’s only a dream.

‘Hello,’ Leia says, and she moves over to them, drifting, peaceful. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Yes.’

‘I missed you,’ she tells him. ‘A great deal.’

He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to say it back. Has he missed her? Not all the time, but enough of it.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he tells her, because he’s sure that that’s true. She, just lightly, touches her hand to his arm, in a gesture of welcome and what is, unmistakably, love.

‘When he dies, the First Order will die,’ she tells them. ‘He controls it all.’

‘We don’t know how to get to him,’ Rey answers.

‘There’ll be a way. There always is.’

And then Luke, who’s much less angry in dreams.

‘You chose, then,’ he says. ‘I suppose that it’ll have to be good enough.’

‘Will it?’

Luke moves closer to him, and Ben can see now that he’s relaxed, more so than he’s ever seen him.

‘It will.’

And then his uncle grins, and he does the strangest thing. He puts his arms around him.

He doesn’t like being touched. Only by Rey, and even then, mostly on his own terms. Luke’s his enemy. He shouldn’t want to touch him. He’s a monster. He shouldn’t –

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Luke says, and he carries on hugging him. ‘You can be so incredibly stupid.’

He tolerates it, for as long as he can, before he has to move away. It’s just a second or two. There’s only so much he can take.

But then again, once he has moved away, he sees Rey’s face, and he thinks that maybe there’s more that he can take than first meets the eye as regards all of this.

‘Luke,’ he says, and he sounds like he used to, all those years ago. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh,’ his uncle says, and he seems surprised. ‘Well. Me too.’

Ben has to practise it, but he supposes he does remember, after all. He moves a bit closer, and he practises reaching out to him, and he practises hugging him back. He’s not sure he’s good at it, but Luke doesn’t appear to mind. He’s probably not good at it either.

‘Where’s Dad?’ he asks Leia, who’s still drifting, an arm around Rey, half-smiling.

‘Around.’ Leia shrugs. ‘He lost the Falcon somewhere. Don’t know. He’ll find it.’

‘It’s on Jakku,’ Rey tells them. ‘I was there, on the Falcon, with Ben. Another Ben.’

‘This mysterious future Ben,’ Luke says, intrigued. ‘What was he like?’

‘He taught me how to use the Force. And how to fly the Falcon.’

‘Hope it’s not been scrapped,’ Luke says. ‘Be a drama if it has.’

‘It was pretty beaten up,’ she admits. ‘And had at least one Rathtor in it.’

Leia laughs.

‘That’s Han,’ she says.

‘We have to find him,’ Rey says. ‘And the Falcon. Then Ben and I have to find Palpatine and kill him.’

‘Good plan,’ Leia says. ‘Effective.’ 

It’s not what he thought it would be, his family. They’re just people. For now, at least, although perhaps not forever, they’re his people.

+

They’ll be there in less than an hour now. After twelve days, the journey is ending. The solitude of it, their intimacy, will fade away in the noise of other people, plans and life. 

She can sense so much now. The things he’s taught her are sharp and fresh in her mind. People are nearby, their lives full of energy and motion and intention and pain. All of it contained inside her head, the endless noise of everything. He’s there too, always. Quiet and strong. The two of them are connected, beyond anything you could ever separate.

Together, they watch the planet, slowly drawing into view.

‘It’ll be a rough landing,’ he tells her, although she already knows. He seems restless, but it’s eagerness to move into a new life, not for fear of loss of the old one.

‘We’ll survive.’

He nods.

‘We will.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? I CAN write happy stuff. xxxx


End file.
